Experimental
Reagents, solutions, and materialAll of the chemicals and solvents were of highest purity available, and were used as received. Distilled water, which was further purified with a MilliQ gradient system (Millipore, Milford, MA, USA), was used to prepare all aqueous solutions. PBC was obtained from Toronto Research Chemicals (North York, Ontario, Canada), and was used without further purification.Stock solutions (1.0 mM) of bioactive amines were prepared in water and stored at 4˚C. These solutions were stable for at least one week, and were diluted further with acetonitrile to the required concentrations before use. A 5 mM solution of PBC A liquid chromatographic (LC) determination of catecholamines and indoleamines is described. This is based on intramolecular excimer-forming fluorescence derivatization with 4-(1-pyrene)butanoyl chloride, followed by reversedphase LC. The analytes, containing an amino moiety and phenolic hydroxyl moieties in a molecule, were converted to the corresponding polypyrene-labeled derivatives by one-step derivatization. They afforded intramolecular excimer fluorescence, which can clearly be discriminated from the normal fluorescence emitted from reagent blanks. The detection limits (S/N = 3) for catecholamines and indoleamines were femto-mole levels per 20-μL injection. Furthermore, this method was applied to a urine assay.