Recent Advances in Portable Analytical Electromigration Devices

Ann Van Schepdael

doi:10.3390/chromatography3010002

Abstract

This article presents an overview of recent advances in the field of portable capillary electrophoresis and microchip electrophoresis equipment during the period 2013–Mid 2015. Instrumental achievements in the separation as well as the detection part of the equipment are discussed. Several applications from a variety of fields are described.

Highlights

This paper intends to give an overview of research results published recently in the field of portable electromigration devices
Lewis et al gave an overview of portable non-chip-based capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, portable chip-based CE systems, and put a special emphasis on in situ
The results demonstrated for the first time that coupling a commercial CE instrument to a portable nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instrument is feasible and can provide a low-cost method to obtain structural information on microliter samples in a non destructive way

Summary

Introduction

This paper intends to give an overview of research results published recently in the field of portable electromigration devices. The instrumentation used for field, and even extraterrestrial analysis, needs to withstand inhospitable conditions in terms of temperature, vibration, or radiation The typical application areas, in which portability is a specific asset, are point-of-care diagnostics (the so-called clinical analysis), in-the-field measurements for environmental purposes, detection of explosives or chemical warfare agents in the frame of terrorist actions, forensic analysis in a crime scene setting, and food analysis outside the laboratory. This manuscript first looks into the advances achieved in instrumentation (see Section 2). There is not necessarily a focus on the complete autonomy of the system, which would be needed for in situ operations where the equipment must be able to function without a user being present [2]

Advances in Instrumentation

Handheld

Photograph

Recent Applications

Conclusions