In this work, we tested the applicability of a commercial CE instrument (Agilent) for capillary ITP (CITP). The fused silica capillaries were flushed with PVP solution before each sample injection to suppress the EOF. As a dual-detection mode, commercial capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection and ultraviolet detectors were applied. The experiments showed that the detection gap of the capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection limits the achievable LOD and the separation resolution when the analyte CITP zones are very narrow, therefore long (120 cm) CE capillary was used and it was largely filled with the sample solution. CITP analyses of several real samples (leather extract, red wine, juice, and fizzy drink) have been demonstrated. In peak mode of CITP when the zone of a chromophore analyte is positioned between nonchromophore zones, excellent sensitivity (in submicromolar concentration range) could be achieved by ultraviolet detection. The hazardous chromate in low concentration was determined in the aqueous extract of tanned leather.

In this work, lab-made PDMS microfluidic chips were matched to a capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector (C(4) D) having external in-plane electrodes (eDAQ, Australia). The advantages of this type of C(4) D are the choice to reversibly place or remove the microchip onto/from the detector and to freely variate the position of the detection (separation length) on the microchip. The thickness of the bottom layer of the PDMS chip was optimized to achieve sensitive detection during the electrophoretic separation. PDMS chips with 100 μm bottom layer used with the C(4) D platform were tested by CZE of a mixture of seven anions and different types of real samples. Using split-flow pressure sample injection and effective length of 6.5 cm, the numbers of theoretical plates were in the range of 4000-6000 (63,000-93,000/m) and the LODs amounted to 3.66-14.7 μmol/L (0.13-2.26 μg/mL) for the studied anions.

This paper demonstrates a simple and easy setting up of a fused-silica capillary-assembled microfluidic system (μCE). This system incorporates a split-flow pressure injection of the sample into a microfluidic system made from PDMS and a short (∼20 cm) length of fused-silica capillary as a separation unit. The on-capillary detection was carried out by fiber optic spectrometry. A mixture of six cephalosporin antibiotics was separated in the μCE system and the obtained results were compared to those achievable by conventional CE. The six components could be separated within 8.5 min with the number of theoretical plates around 10 000.

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