Abstract
A major challenge within forensic science is the development of accurate and robust methodologies that can be utilized on-site for detection at crime scenes and can be used for analyzing multiple sample types. The recent expansion of electrochemical sensors to tackle this hurdle requires sensors that can undergo analysis without any pretreatment. Given the vast array of samples that are submitted for forensic analysis, this can pose a major challenge for all electrochemical sensors, including electrochemiluminescent (ECL)-based sensors. Within this contribution, we demonstrate the capacity for an ECL-based sensor to address this challenge and it is potential to detect and quantify atropine from a wide range of samples directly from herbal material to spiked solutions. This portable platform demonstrates satisfactory analytical parameters with linearity across a concentration range of 0.75 to 100 μM, reproducibility of 3.0%, repeatability of 9.2%, and a detection limit of ∼0.75 μM. The sensor displays good selectivity toward alkaloid species and, in particular, the hallucinogenic tropane alkaloid functionality within complex matrices. This portable sensor provides rapid detection alongside low cost and operational simplicity, thus, providing a basis for the exploitation of ECL-based sensors within the forensic arena.
Highlights
The exploitation of illicit substances continues to be a global issue further exacerbated by the ever changing nature of the global drug market. This has proved challenging with the increasing presence of novel psychoactive substances (NPS).[1−3] Traditional methodologies such as high performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) remain the gold standard laboratory based analytical techniques in forensic analysis
The developed sensor demonstrates a degree of selectivity toward alkaloid species, with a preference toward tropane alkaloids observed
A slight signal is observed for other naturally occurring glycoalkaoids found within herbal material, these signals are negligible compared with the hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids of interest, and as such, these naturally occurring alkaloids can be used as a threshold value above which it can be determined if hallucinogens are present or not
Summary
Traditional methods for the identification of atropine and scopolamine, a structurally similar compound found within Datura, typically involve HPLC,[11] HPLC-MS,[12] and GC-MS analyses.[11,13] these methods suffer from significant instrument cost, lack of compatibility with the optimal extraction solvents, and poor portability. Maximum ECL responses observed using the proposed sensor in the presence of different species naturally found within the herbal material of the solanaceous family and compared against the signals observed for atropine sulfate in LiClO4 and Datura. This does represent a limitation of the proposed system; this is outweighed by the potential screening ability of this portable ECL approach and the rapid results that can be obtained This current study focuses on the detection of atropine, it can be clearly seen from Figure 6 that one of the closely related tropane alkaloid compounds, scopolamine, generates a significant ECL emission. This is currently underway with the ability to differentiate between the two species under investigation Despite this likely interferent effect, as the signals obtained within the herbal material lie within the same potential range identified for both atropine and scopolamine, we are confident in our identification of the presence of hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids within this material. It is hoped that this protocol would be applicable to a range of different drink matrices across a range of pH values
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