Synthetic opioid drugs, such as fentanyl and sufentanil, have very high analgesic potency. Abuse of these prescription painkillers – along with a rapidly growing list of illicit analogues – is a significant public health problem.

In this study, we developed a simple dilute-and-shoot method that provides a fast 3.5 minute analysis of fentanyl and related compounds (norfentanyl, acetyl fentanyl, alfentanil, butyryl fentanyl, carfentanil, remifentanil, and sufentanil) in human urine by LC-MS/MS using a Raptor Biphenyl column.