Two major development areas in HPLC-NMR hyphenationare postcolumn solid-phase extraction (HPLC-SPE-NMR)
and capillary separations with NMR detection
by meansof solenoidal microcoils (CapNMR). These two techniqueswere com
bined off-line into HPLC-SPE-CapNMR, whichcom
bines the advantage of high loada
bility of normal-
boreHPLC columns with high mass sensitivity of capillaryNMR pro
bes with an active volume of 1.5 <
IMG SRC="/images/entities/mgr.gif">L. Thetechnique was used for rapid identification of complexsesquiterpene lactones
and esterified phenylpropanoidspresent in an essentially crude plant extract (toluenefraction of an ethanolic extract of
Thapsia garganicafruits). Elution profiles of 10 × 1 mm i.d. SPE cartridgesfilled with poly(divinyl
benzene) resin were found to
beonly marginally
broader than those o
bserved upon directinjection of 6-
![](/images/entities/mgr.gif)
L samples into the pro
be. Thus, thetechnique focuses analytes emerging in the HPLC elution
bands of 0.5-1 mL into volumes of ~10
![](/images/entities/mgr.gif)
L, compati
blewith the CapNMR pro
be. Using this technique, ninenatural products (
1-
9) present in the plant extract inamounts varying from 0.1 to 20% were identified
bymeans of 1D
and 2D NMR spectra, supported
by parallelHPLC-ESIMS measurements. Therefore, HPLC-SPE-CapNMR should
be regarded as an attractive alternative toother applications of CapNMR for mixture analysis.