Establishment of Green Mixed Micellar Liquid Chromatography with Deep Eutectic Solvents as Mobile Phase Modifiers and Evaluation of Greenness

In response to green chemistry, a simple and green mixed micellar liquid chromatographic method with deep eutectic solvents as mobile phase modifiers was developed, and separation studies were carried out on chlorogenic acid, liquiritin, ferulic acid, psoralen, nodakenin, and prim-O-glucosylcimifugin. The target compounds were successfully separated within 15 min. The best chromatographic conditions were obtained through optimization experiments. The mobile phase was a mixed aqueous solution containing 0.06 M sodium dodecyl sulfate, 0.01 M polyoxyethylene lauryl ether, and a deep eutectic solvent with a volume fraction of 5% and a pH value of 2.90. The mobile phase ran at a flow rate of 1 mL/min in isocratic mode. The established method was validated in terms of the linear range, limit of detection, limit of quantification, recovery, and intraday and interday precision and successfully applied to the quantitative analysis of these six compounds in Chinese patent medicine. The greenness of the method was evaluated using the green evaluation system “Green Analytical Procedure Index” and compared with the methods in the published literature. It was verified that the proposed mixed micellar liquid chromatography is a green chromatographic method. The established method is simple, green, and low cost, which provides new ideas to researchers for innovation in green analytical chemistry.