Determination of Tertiary Amines as Pentafluorobenzyl Carbamates by Electron Capture Gas Chromatography

Abstract

Abstract A new, electrophore containing reagent, pentafluorobenzyl chloroformate, is introduced for the direct determination of tertiary amines with electron capture gas chromatography. Use of a base catalyst, Na2CO3, gives complete carbamate formation in less than 30 minutes. The derivatives are stable and have excellent sensitivity in an electron capture detector as the minimum detectable quantity is in the order of 1 × 10−16 moles/sec or corresponding to about 3 pg in an injected sample. The reagent has been tested for quantitative determinations in the range 12–120 μg/ml with the recovery 100 ± 2.6% at the 60 μg/ml level.