Temperature-assisted ionic liquid dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction combined with high performance liquid chromatography for the determination of anthraquinones in Radix et Rhizoma Rhei samples

In this article, a novel method termed as temperature-assisted ionic liquid dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (TA IL-DLLME) combining high performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) was developed for the determination of anthraquinones in Radix et Rhizoma Rhei samples. The ionic liquid (1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate) was used to replace volatile organic solvent as an extraction solvent for the extraction of anthraquinones (aloe-emodin, rhein, emodin, chrysophanol and physcion) from Radix et Rhizoma Rhei. Several important parameters influencing the extraction efficiency of TA IL-DLLME such as the type and volume of extraction solvent and disperser solvent, sample pH, extraction time, extraction temperature, centrifugation time as well as salting-out effects were optimized. Under the optimal conditions, the spiked recovery for each analyte was in the range of 95.2–108.5%. The precisions of the proposed method were varied from 1.1% to 4.4% (RSD). All the analytes exhibited good linearity with correlation coefficients (r2) ranging from 0.9986 to 0.9996. The limits of detection for all target analytes were ranged from 0.50 to 2.02 μg L−1 (S/N = 3). The experimental results indicated that the proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of anthraquinones in Radix et Rhizoma Rhei.