Application of mass pectrometry to characterize the components present in curcumin Sample

The identification of the components present in crude samples purely by mass spectrometric techniques has been a long-standing problem. Conventionally, components present in a crude sample are isolated and purified by chromatographic methods and then various spectrometric techniques (including mass spectrometric techniques) are adopted for their structure elucidation and physical characterization. This paper gives an example illustrating the characterization of the components present in a crude sample purely by mass spectrometric techniques.

A commercially obtained curcumin sample (Assay: 65-70%) was chosen for this purpose. The mass analysis of this sample using time-of-flight reflectron mass spectrometric techniques namely plasma desorption (PD), laser desorption (LD) and electrospray ionization (ESI) gave evidence for the presence of curcuminoids other than curcumin in the sample. The electrospray Fourier transform ionization cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry combined with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has been adopted successfully to confirm the presence of all curcuminoids in the curcumin sample.  

doi:10.4038/sljp.v4i0.189  

Sri Lankan Journal of Physics, Vol.4 (2003) 11-20