Simultaneous quantification of catecholamines in rat brain by high‐performance liquid chromatography with on‐line gold nanoparticle‐catalyzed luminol chemiluminescence detection

A new method based on high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with on‐line gold nanoparticle‐catalyzed luminol chemiluminescence (CL) detection was developed for the simultaneous quantitation of catecholamines in rat brain. In the present CL system, gold nanoparticles were produced by the on‐line reaction of H₂O₂, NaHCO₃?Na₂CO₃ (buffer solution of luminol) and HAuCl_4. Norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (EP) and dopamine (DA) could strongly enhance the CL signal of the on‐line gold nanoparticle‐catalyzed luminol system. The UV?visible absorption spectra and transmission electron microscopy studies were carried out, and the CL enhancement mechanism was proposed. Catecholamines promoted the on‐line formation of more gold nanoparticles, which better catalyzed the luminol–H₂O₂ CL reaction. The good separation of NE, EP and DA was achieved with isocratic elution using a mixture of methanol and 0.2% aqueous phosphoric acid (5:95, v/v) within 8.5 min. Under the optimized conditions, the detection limits, defined as a signal‐to‐noise ratio of 3, were in the range of 1.32–1.90 ng/mL, corresponding to 26.4?38.0 pg for 20 μL sample injection. The recoveries of catecholamines added to rat brain sample were >94.6%, with the precisions <5.5%. The validated HPLC?CL method was successfully applied to determine NE and DA in rat brain without prior sample purification. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.