Rapid screening and determination of 11 new psychoactive substances by direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Rationale With the amounts and types of new psychoactive substances (NPSs) increasing rapidly in recent years, an excellent high‐throughput method for the analysis of these compounds is urgently needed. In this article, a rapid screening method and a quantitative analysis method for 11 NPSs are described and compared, respectively. Method A simple direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry (DART‐MS) method was developed for the analysis of 11 NPSs including three categories of these substances present on the global market such as four cathinones, one phenylethylamine, and six synthetic cannabinoids. In order to analyze these compounds quantitatively with better accuracy and sensitivity, another rapid analytical method with a low limit of detection (LOD) was also developed using liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (LC/QTOFMS). Results The 11 NPSs could be determined within 0.5 min by DART‐MS. Furthermore, they could also be separated and determined within 5 min by the LC/QTOFMS method. The two methods both showed good linearity with correlation coefficients (r2) higher than 0.99. The LODs for all these target NPSs by DART‐MS and LC/QTOFMS ranged from 5 to 40 ng mL−1 and 0.1 to 1 ng mL−1, respectively. Confiscated samples, named as “music vanilla” and “bath salt”, and 11 spiked samples were firstly screened by DART‐MS and then determined by LC/QTOFMS. Conclusions The identification of NPSs in confiscated materials was successfully achieved, and the proposed analytical methodology could offer rapid screening and accurate analysis results. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.