A HPLC method based on deep eutectic solvents to analyze high concentration of TATB

Abstract

TATB as an insensitive high explosive, has wide applications in both civil and military areas. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a crucial tool to analyze the purity for quality control of TATB. However, current HPLC method for TATB has several drawbacks resulted by its poor solubility. A deep eutectic solvent (CS-1) has high solubility toward TATB, so it has been used as the pretreatment solvent and mobile phase to develop a new HPLC method for TATB in this work. When CS-1 was used as the pretreatment solvent for TATB prior to HPLC analysis, it displayed greater efficiency, less dosage, and shorter time compared to conventional solvents such as dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and dimethyl formamide (DMF). Compared to the pretreatment time of 240 min by using DMSO, the pretreatment time of TATB by using CS-1 is significantly shortened to 20 min. Meanwhile, the carrying capacity of mobile phase for TATB became stronger after CS-1 was added into the mobile phase. The concentration of TATB with 40 mg·100 mL−1 is successfully analyzed by the HPLC based on the mobile phase containing CS-1, which is 10 times higher than that of DMSO with 4.0 mg·100 mL−1. Therefore, a new HPLC method based on CS-1 as one of the deep eutectic solvents is first established to improve the efficiency and representation of analyzing high concentration of TATB.