RESUMO
This paper reports a method for rapid, simple, direct, and reproducible determination of glyphosate and its major metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA). The platform described herein uses polyester-toner microchips incorporating capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection and electrophoresis separation of the analytes. The polyester-toner microchip presented 150 µm-wide and 12 µm-deep microchannels, with injection and separation lengths of 10 and 40 mm long, respectively. The best results were obtained with 320 kHz frequency, 4.5 Vpp excitation voltage, 80 mmol/L CHES/Tris buffer at pH 8.8, injection in -1.0 kV for 7 s, and separation in -1.5 kV. RSD values related to the peak areas for glyphosate and AMPA were 1.5 and 3.3% and 10.1 and 8.6% for intra- and interchip assays, respectively. The detection limits were 45.1 and 70.5 µmol/L, respectively, without any attempt of preconcentration of the analytes. Finally, the method was applied to river water samples in which glyphosate and AMPA (1.0 mmol/L each) were added. The recovery results were 87.4 and 83.7% for glyphosate and AMPA, respectively. The recovery percentages and LOD values obtained here were similar to others reported in the literature.