Chemical Species, Micromorphology, and XRD Fingerprint Analysis of Tibetan MedicineZuotaiContaining Mercury

Abstract

Zuotai(gTso thal) is one of the famous drugs containing mercury in Tibetan medicine. However, little is known about the chemical substance basis of its pharmacodynamics and the intrinsic link of different samples sources so far. Given this, energy dispersive spectrometry of X-ray (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to assay the elements, micromorphology, and phase composition of nineZuotaisamples from different regions, respectively; the XRD fingerprint features ofZuotaiwere analyzed by multivariate statistical analysis. EDX result shows thatZuotaicontains Hg, S, O, Fe, Al, Cu, and other elements. SEM and AFM observations suggest thatZuotaiis a kind of ancient nanodrug. Its particles are mainly in the range of 100–800 nm, which commonly further aggregate into 1–30 μm loosely amorphous particles. XRD test shows thatβ-HgS, S8, andα-HgS are its main phase compositions. XRD fingerprint analysis indicates that the similarity degrees of nine samples are very high, and the results of multivariate statistical analysis are broadly consistent with sample sources. The present research has revealed the physicochemical characteristics ofZuotai, and it would play a positive role in interpreting this mysterious Tibetan drug.