Simultaneous determination of 14 bioactive citrus flavonoids using thin-layer chromatography combined with surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Citrus flavonoids consist of diverse analogs and possess various health-promoting effects dramatically depending on their chemical structures. Since different flavonoids usually co-exist in real samples, it's necessary to develop rapid and efficient methods for simultaneous determination of multiple flavonoids. Thin layer chromatography combined with surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TLC-SERS) was established to simultaneously separate and detect 14 citrus flavonoids for the first time. These target compounds could be characterized and discriminated when paired with SERS at 6-500 times greater the sensitivity than TLC alone. TLC-SERS exhibited high recovery rates (91.5-121.7%) with relative standard deviation lower than 20.8%. Moreover, the established TLC-SERS method was successfully used to simultaneously detect multiple flavonoids in real samples, which exhibited comparable accuracy to high performance liquid chromatography with shorter analytical time (10 vs 45 min). All the results demonstrated that this could be a promising method for simultaneous, rapid, sensitive and accurate detection of flavonoids.