Analysis of alkaloids by capillary electrophoresis

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a useful tool in phytochemical analysis and it meets the requirements for the quality control of herbal drugs because of its versatility and high separation power. The wide opportunity for selectivity tuning allows the analysis of molecules with a wide range of polarity and molecular weight, in addition like high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), the method is suitable for hyphenation with mass spectrometry (MS). In the chapter it is given an overview on the most relevant aspects of the analysis of alkaloids by electromigration methods, namely capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), nonaqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE), micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC). Selected recent applications of CE in analysis of alkaloids are summarized in a table following the classification according to the chemical nature of the considered compounds.