Abstract

Methamphetamine is an amine-containing illegal drug and is distributed unlawfully in South Korea. Finding a rapid, convenient and semi-quantitative determination method for methamphetamine is a very importantissue in the area of forensic drug testing. As an effort to develop new screening method, the reactions betweenthree organic compounds which are structurally similar to methamphetamine and N-(9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyloxy)succinimide (FMOC-NHS) were performed on silica gel (SiO2) TLC plates. Three reference compounds weresynthesized and used for the identification, comparison and study of the limit of detection (LOD) of the productsobtained from a direct reaction on a TLC plate. As a result, FMOC-NHS as a derivatization reagent generatedcompounds containing highly UV-active functional groups on the TLC plate after reacting with primary- andsecondary amines. In the experiment 2D the LOD of amines was in the range of 0.045 and 0.01 mg/mL (2 μL/spot), and in 1D the LOD was in the range of 0.002 and 0.007 mg/mL (2 μL/spot). The LODs of the compoundstested were dependent on the concentration of the derivatizing reagent.