Abstract
Absorbance detection in capillary electrophoresis (CE) offers excellent mass sensitivity but relatively poor concentration sensitivity. This dichotomy arises from the short optical path lengths found in current detector designs. Minimum detectable concentrations range from 10 -5 to 10 -7 M. The theoretical and physical design aspects affecting signal, noise, and optical transmission of various commercial (CE) detector cells are discussed. A new Z-shaped cell is described which uses a quartz ball lens to optimize light throughput in a 3-mm capillary section. The optical enhancement of the cell provides more than 1 order of magnitude improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (MDC to 10 -8 M) over that of a conventional cell design with sapphire ball optics
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