title: Rapid characterization of commercial polysorbate 80 by ultra-high performance supercritical fluid chromatography combined with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry.
abstract: Polysorbate 80, as a nonionic surfactant, is widely used in the food, personal care, and pharmaceutical industries due to the advantages of high surface activity, low toxicity, etc. In fact, the products of polysorbate 80 are complex mixtures of oligomers. In this work, a novel and fast method was developed to characterize the commercial polysorbate 80 by ultra-high performance supercritical fluid chromatography (UHPSFC) combined with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QTOF-MS). Some crucial parameters, such as temperature, back pressure and flow rate were optimized. UHPSFC could distinguish n-mer from (n-1)-mer and (n+1)-mer in the same series, which provided the high separation resolution needed for quantitative determination of each oligomer in same series. It was not achieved in previous studies. Furthermore, the characteristic ion fragments were found in MS/MS experiment and used to identify different series. The results revealed that main components of this nonionic surfactant comprise polyethylene oxide (PEO), PEO-monooleate, PEO-isosorbide, PEO-isosorbide monooleate, PEO-isosorbide dioleate, PEO-sorbitan, PEO-sorbitan monooleate, PEO-sorbitan dioleate and PEO-sorbitan trioleate, etc. The separation was performed using BEH stationary phase, so the relationship between molecular structure of these oligomers and chromatographic retention behavior in supercritical fluid chromatography were also investigated for first time. The whole analytical process only takes 8min for one sample. Therefore, UHPSFC-QTOF-MS is a simple, novel and efficient tool to analyze polysorbate 80.
authors: College of Science, Beijing Key Laboratory of Environmentally Harmful Chemical Analysis, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
authors: Jinheng
authors: J
authors: Pan
authors: Lehrstuhl für Biotechnologie, RWTH Aachen University, Worringerweg 3, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
authors: Yu
authors: Y
authors: Ji
authors: College of Science, Beijing Key Laboratory of Environmentally Harmful Chemical Analysis, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China. Electronic address: duzx@mail.buct.edu.cn.
authors: Zhenxia
authors: Z
authors: Du
authors: Institute of Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer and IGCIT, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.
authors: Jianwen
authors: J
authors: Zhang
mesh_terms: D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D025924:Chromatography, Supercritical Fluid; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry; D011136:Polysorbates / Q000032:analysis* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D011136:Polysorbates; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols
keywords: Polysorbate 80; Retention model; UHPSFC-QTOF-MS