Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Nicotine, Nicotine Derivatives, and Nicotine-Related Alkaloid Optical Isomers: A Review

During the last 35 years technologies and hardware for the separation of enantiomers have advanced tremendously. Today, complete resolution of the enantiomers of nicotine and related compounds can effectively be attained within a few seconds and most often less than 10 minutes. In some unique cases, enantiomeric separation for nicotine-related compounds having a wide variety of functional groups has been demonstrated. Particularly, the successful wedding of short HPLC and SFC columns containing very small particle size materials bonded to chiral stationary phase materials coupled with information-rich detectors like electrospray ionization mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry has facilitated this remarkable transition. Taken collectively the HPLC and SFC technologies will allow for very rapid (seconds), reliable, and reproducible (% RSD routinely < 5%) for nicotine and related alkaloid enantiomers.