Characterization of a Cannabinomimetic Compound in Synthetic Cannabis by Gas Chromatography-High Resolution Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (GC-HRT)

This application note shows the analysis of a commercially available synthetic cannabinoid by Gas Chromatography-High Resolution Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (GC-HRT). The identification of these compounds by GC-MS can be challenging as most of them are not present in commercially available mass spectral search libraries. It was shown that the most abundant analyte detected in the samples was not present in the mass spectral search database (NIST 2008) which was used for spectral searching. Both electron ionization (EI) and chemical ionization (CI) experiments were then conducted to verify the molecular ion. The data was used to perform formula searches which ultimately lead to the identification of a known cannabinoid receptor agonist.