Voltammetric Characterization and Quantification of the Cocaine Analog Nitracaine

Abstract

Abstract Synthetic cocaine analogs are designer drugs that recently emerged as non‐controlled substitutes for their parent drug. Among them, nitracaine is of particular concern for its psychoactive effect. In this work, we present a thorough characterization of the electrochemical behavior of nitracaine, with a final quantification performed by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) in ethanol/lithium perchlorate 0.1 M. The selectivity of the method and reproducibility of results were assessed. LOQ of 0.3 μg mL−1 and a linear dynamic range of up to 400 μg mL−1 were obtained. In addition, recoveries from 85 % to 101 % were achieved on both simulated and real samples. For nitracaine analysis in urine, a clean‐up and a preconcentration step by solid phase extraction (SPE) using the adsorbent Florisil have been developed and optimized through the Design of Experiments (DoE) strategy, thus achieving an enrichment factor of 20.

Keywords

• Differential pulse voltammetry
• Electroanalysis
• Nitracaine
• Forensic sciences
• Cocaine substitutes
• Forensic chemistry