Abstract: In order to investigate volatile components released from different cigarettes, a purging and trapping device was developed. By optimizing the purging and trapping conditions, a purge and trap-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method for determining the volatile components was established. A dispersion and hierarchical cluster analysis of 136 components detected in 38 cigarette samples were performed. The results showed that: 1) With purging temperature of 60 ℃, purging time of 60 min, desorption temperature of 190 ℃ and purging velocity of 45 mL/min, the experimental results were satisfactory. 2) Under the optimized purge and trap conditions, 120 components were detected in sample 1^#, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 101 components were not higher than 10%. 3) Cluster analysis indicated that some samples from the same manufacturer were more similar, and a few of cigarette samples had obvious characteristics in tobacco blend, flavor and auxiliary materials used.