Chemistry

Biography

Biography: Mylène Campredon

Abstract

The most commonly used techniques for the identification of forensic drug samples are HPLC and GC/MS because they can provide specific spectral data on individual compounds in a complex mixture without prior isolation. Recently, Diffusion Ordered SpectroscopY (DOSY) has been increasingly applied to the analysis of mixtures of small organic molecules. The usefulness of DOSY NMR has been demonstrated in the analysis of heroin in solution. In parallel, alternative NMR approaches suited for mixture analysis have been sought and developed. Among those, ¹H Maximum-Quantum NMR has provided the highest resolution, up to tens of molecules in favourable cases. We here report a simple and fast method to detect the presence of cocaine in illicit drug samples by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This is achieved by combining the commonly used 1D spectra and diffusion-ordered spectroscopy and introducing the 2D maximum-quantum NMR approach to forensic analysis. By relying on non-uniform sampling acceleration of 2D spectroscopy, the identification can be obtained in less than 3 min for 10 mg of product. Moreover, we will show that the intermolecular interactions of the sample constituents, while affecting the analysis result, do not interfere with the quality of the detection of the proposed protocol.