Chapter 1 Principles of capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the principles of capillary electrophoresis (CE). A brief history of CE has been discussed in the chapter. In CE, the walls of the fused silica capillary permit efficient heat dissipation. Therefore, field strengths much higher than those used for slab gel electrophoresis can be employed. This results in faster and more efficient separations. Since convection because of heat is not generally a problem in CE, it is not necessary to employ gels. This substantially widens the range of separation applications from very small (pharmaceuticals, anions and cations) to very large (glycoproteins, oligonucleotides) molecules. One of the reasons for the popularity of CE is that the necessary instrumentation is quite simple and easily assembled. A typical system is illustrated diagrammatically in the chapter. The separation and detection modes are somewhat analogous to those used for liquid chromatography.