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Zone electrophoresis in open tubular capillaries is a useful approach to high-resolution separations of charged substances. Efficient heat transfer from small diameter capillaries permits application of unusually high voltages, which promote more effective separations and increase the speed of analyses. A sample injection technique and on-line zone detection create an instrumental format for zone electrophoresis. The basic theory, system parameters, and preliminary results are described.

The use of extremely high pressures in liquid chromatography can improve the efficiency and reduce analysis time for columns packed with small particles. In this work, fused-silica capillaries with inner diameters of 30 microns are slurry packed with 1.5 microns nonporous octadecylsilane-modified silica particles. These columns are prepared in lengths up to 66 cm with packing pressures as high as 4100 bar (60,000 psi). Near the optimum flow rate, columns generate as many as 300,000 theoretical plates for lightly retained compounds (k' < 0.5) and over 200,000 plates for more retained compounds (k' approximately 2). These translate to plate heights (Hmin) as low as 2.1 microns. The pressures required to run at optimum flow rates are on the order of 1400 bar (20,000 psi). Analysis times at these pressures are on the order of 30 min (k' approximately 2) and can be reduced to less than 10 min at higher than optimum flow rates. Capacity factors are observed to increase linearly with applied pressure.

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This is a description of a comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography (LC) system for the separation of protein mixtures. This system uses cation-exchange chromatography followed by reversed-phase chromatography (RPLC). The two LC systems are coupled by an eight-port valve equipped with two storage loops and under computer control. The RPLC effluent is sampled by both a UV detector and an electrospray mass spectrometer. In this way, complex mixtures of large biomolecules can be rapidly separated, desalted, and analyzed for molecular weight in less than 2 h. The system's utility is demonstrated with a mixture of standards and an Escherichia coli cell lysate.