Determination of hexachlorophene in cosmetics by capillary electrophoresis compared with high performance liquid chromatography

A simple capillary electrophoresis (CE) method with ultraviolet (UV) detection was developed for the determination of hexachlorophene (HCP) in cosmetics. Separation conditions were obtained in 20 mM Na2B4O7, 10% MeOH (pH 9.20), with 25 kV applied voltage and UV detection at 208 nm. Under the selected conditions, electrophoretic analysis was completed in about 4 min, with limit of detection (LOD) of 0.06 µg·mL−1 for HCP. The method was successfully applied to determine HCP in three kinds of cosmetics with relative standard deviations (RSD) of 0.52–3.02% and recoveries from 90.0 to 96.4% for the spiked samples. The results indicated that the proposed method was reliable. Comparative experiments were also carried out with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-UV method described in National Standards of People's Republic of China. The validation results of the two methods are comparable, but the proposed CE method is simple, rapid, which makes separation and analyte quantification in shorter time with much less reagent consumption.