Abstract
The new ionization method, called surface‐activated chemical ionization (SACI), was employed for the analysis of fives drugs (morphine, codeine, 6‐monoacetylmorphine (6‐MAM), benzoylecgonine and cocaine) by ion trap mass spectrometry. The results so obtained have been compared with those achieved by using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI), no‐discharge‐APCI and electrospray ionization (ESI) clearly showing that SACI is the most sensible one mainly due to the high ionization efficiency and the lower chemical noise. The performance of SACI in terms of sensitivity and linearity was compared with the sensitivity and linearity obtained using APCI, no‐discharge‐APCI and ESI, showing that the new SACI approach gives rise to the best results. Then, SACI was used to analyze morphine, codeine, 6‐MAM, benzoylecgonine and cocaine in urine samples. After the optimization of the instrumental parameters for a mixture of the standard compounds, eight urine samples were analyzed. They were strongly diluted (1 : 20 and 1 : 100) in order to prevent the chromatographic column damage due to the matrix composition. Furthermore, the diluted urine samples were directly analyzed, without pretreatment, through LC‐MS and LC‐MS/MS, and the obtained results are reported. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.