Development of a Pencil Drawn Paper‐based Analytical Device to Detect Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)*†

Abstract

The need for agile and proper identification of drugs of abuse has encouraged the scientific community to improve and to develop new methodologies. The drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is still widely used due to its hallucinogenic effects. The use of voltammetric methods to analyze narcotics has increased in recent years, and the possibility of miniaturizing the electrochemical equipment allows these methods to be applied outside the laboratory; for example, in crime scenes. In addition to portability, the search for affordable and sustainable materials for use in electroanalytical research has grown in recent decades. In this context, employing paper substrate, graphite pencil, and silver paint to construct paper-based electrodes is a great alternative. Here, a paper-based device comprising three electrodes was drawn on 300 g/m 2 watercolor paper with 8B pencils, and its efficiency was compared to the efficiency of a commercially available screen-printed carbon electrode. Square wave voltammetry was used for LSD analysis in aqueous medium containing 0.05 mol/L LiClO 4. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.38 and 1.27 μmol/L, respectively. Both electrodes exhibited a similar voltammetric response, which was also confirmed during analysis of a seized LSD sample, with recovery of less than 10%. The seized samples were previously analyzed by GCMS technique, employing the full scan spectra against the software spectral library. The electrode selectivity was also tested against 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and methamphetamine. It was possible to differentiate these compounds from LSD, indicating that the developed paper-based device has potential application in forensic chemistry analyses.

Lab-on-a-Chip approaches for the detection of controlled drugs, including new psychoactive substances: A systematic review

“…The LODs for spectrometry techniques ranged from 0.0178 to 51 ng mL − 1 and offered similar level of sensitivity based on the LODs for drugs of abuse reported in the publications when compared to other LOC detection methods [27,57,39,40,66,67,[71][72][73][74]. All electrochemical techniques reported LODs, however, these were the least sensitive method ranging from 760.72 − 1.24 × 10 16 ng mL − 1 [34,37,41,47,75]. LOC devices utilizing CE also reported slightly higher LODs than the other LOC detection methods, with Qiang et al (2009) reporting LODs between 1150 and 2090 ng mL − 1 for a range of drugs of abuse with the authors acknowledging further research needs to be undertaken to ensure that these are more clinically relevant [48].…”

“…Cross-reactivity can have a significant effect on the accuracy of any drug detection methods, however, only 29% of the publications investigated the potential cross-reactivity of cutting agents, diluents, adulterants or pro-drugs using an LOC device [20,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. The most extensive research on cross-reactivity has been carried out on those devices which utilise colorimetric detection.…”

“…Ameku et al (2021) could successfully detect cocaine adulterated with 4-dimethy-aminoantipyrine using electrochemical detection but some cross-reactivity was observed with other cutting agents such as lidocaine and levamisole [33]. A paper-based electrochemical LOC device used for the detection of lysergic acid diethylamine (LSD) investigated interference testing with three compounds: methamphetamine showed no response, MDMA showed a well separated peak from LSD, but the structurally similar lysergic acid amide was indistinguishable due to similar voltametric peaks [34].…”

“…Aqueous samples offer advantages as these solutions can be representative of bulk or seized drug samples, and can be easily prepared by dissolving the analyte in solution. A variety of non-biological matrices were reported including water [20,34,36,[38][39][40][41][42], acetonitrile [25,29,34], phosphate buffered saline (PBS) [44][45][46][47], methanol [27,34], combination of acetone and deionised water [31], 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (MES) buffer [48] well as beverages including energy drinks [37] and fruit juices [37] to represent 'spiked drink' samples. Only 7% of the publications using LOC devices tested powder drug samples.…”

Microfluidic Paper-Based Analytical Devices: From Design to Applications

“…The sensor utilized for simultaneous detection of caffeine and paracetamol, and levamisole adulterants with differential pulse voltammetry and SERS methods, respectively. Similarly, a electrochemical approach for detection of LSD was used by Ribeiro et al 495 A graphite pencil was used to create the working and counter electrodes and silver ink was used for the reference electrode. Different graphite pencils from 2B to 8B consisting of various graphite and wax content, and paper substrate with different weight and roughness were used for optimization studies of fabrication process.…”