Flow injection-chemiluminescence determination of puerarin in pharmaceutical preparations

Strong chemiluminescence was observed when cerium(IV) reacted with rhodamine 6G in sulfuric acid medium in the presence of puerarin. This phenomenon has been utilized to design a sensitive and selective flow injection-chemiluminescence method for the determination of puerarin. Under the optimum conditions, the proposed procedure has a linear range between 1.3 x 10(-9) and 8.0 x 10(-7) g/mL, with a detection limit of 8.4 x 10(-10) g/mL puerarin and a relative standard deviation of 1.86% (n = 11) at 5.0 x 10(-8) g/mL puerarin. The method was successfully applied to the determination of puerarin in pharmaceutical preparations. The mechanism of this chemiluminescence reaction has been proposed. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.