Rapid analysis of Fructus forsythiae essential oil by ionic liquids-assisted microwave distillation coupled with headspace single-drop microextraction followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

• A new ILAMD-HS-SDME method is developed for the microextraction of essential oil.
• ILs used as destruction agent of plant cell walls and microwave absorption medium.
• Parameters affecting the extraction efficiency are optimized by Box–Behnken design.
• Procedure benefits: similar constituents, shorter duration and smaller sample amount.
• ILAMD-HS-SDME followed by GC–MS is a promising technique in analytical fields.

A rapid, green and effective miniaturized sample preparation and analytical technique, i.e. ionic liquids-assisted microwave distillation coupled with headspace single-drop microextraction (ILAMD-HS-SDME) followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was developed for the analysis of essential oil (EO) in Fructus forsythiae. In this work, ionic liquids (ILs) were not only used as the absorption medium of microwave irradiation but also as the destruction agent of plant cell walls. 1-Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([C2mim]OAc) was chosen as the optimal ILs. Moreover, n-heptadecane (2.0 μL) was selected as the appropriate suspended solvent for the extraction and concentration of EO. Extraction conditions of the proposed method were optimized using the relative peak area of EO constituents as the index, and the optimal operational parameters were obtained as follows: irradiation power (300 W), sample mass (0.7 g), mass ratio of ILs to sample (2.4), temperature (78 °C) and time (3.4 min). In comparison to previous reports, the proposed method was faster and required smaller sample amount but could equally monitor all EO constituents with no significant differences.

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