Synthetic cathinones (SCs) are a group of new psychoactive substances often referred to as “legal highs” or “bath salts”, being characterized by a dynamic change, new compounds continuously emerging on the market. This creates a lack of fast screening tests, making SCs a constant concern for law enforcement agencies.
In this article, in which the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, the University of Antwerp, and the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC) have participated, a fast and simple method for the detection of four SCs based on their electrochemical profiles in a decentralized manner is presented.
The performance of the method was evaluated on real confiscated samples, the resulting validation parameters being similar to those obtained with another portable device (i.e., Raman spectrometer).
Full article has been published in Nanomaterials and can be found here.