Gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric study of the reductive silylation of hydroxyquinones

Abstract

Reductive trimethylsilylation was carried out with N-methyl-N-trimethylsilyltrifluoroacetamide under optimized conditions to afford quantitatively the all-silylated products of several hydroxynaphthoquinones and -anthraquinones. The silylated products were investigated by GC-MS. The fragmentation patterns of the compounds provided valuable information about their structure and consequently about the structure of the initial hydroxyquinones. The silylation and GC-MS separation scheme was applied to mixtures of hydroxyquinones, leading to effective separation of all the ingredients, which included several hydroxyquinone isomers.