A five-electrode capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector with a low limit of detection

The conductivity detector is a broadly used device that allows for the highly efficient detection of analytes, and continuous efforts have been directed toward lowering the limit of detection. In this study, a five-electrode capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector (TIC⁴D) is proposed, which uses copper mesh between the electrodes for a grounding shield to reduce the interference of stray capacitance and noise. After adding the copper mesh shield, the difference value between the response signal and baseline at low KCl concentration is effectively increased, achieving 33 mV for 10^-9 M KCl solution. Meanwhile, for the unshielded detector, the difference is only 18 mV for the KCl solution at the same concentration. The response signal shows a linear function of the logarithm at the range of 10^-4 M to 10^-5 M KCl solution, and the TIC⁴D detector displays a higher slope (0.8448) than the conventional single-input capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector (C⁴D: 0.5579) and dual-input capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detectors (DIC⁴D: 0.6173). Moreover, two TIC⁴D detectors are combined to achieve a dual-channel six-input differential capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector (SIDC⁴D), reducing the high baseline levels caused by the multi-signal input. By differentially amplifying the output signal, the high baseline levels and noise interference can be effectively reduced. For the 10^-3 M KCl solution, the ratio of the response signal to baseline for SIDC⁴D can reach 8.500, almost 7 times that of TIC⁴D, and a lower limit of detection (LOD) of 3 × 10^-10 M is also achieved. This work may open a new door based on coupled contactless conductivity for detection performance.

A Novel Planar Grounded Capacitively Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detector for Microchip Electrophoresis

In the microchip electrophoresis with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection, the stray capacitance of the detector causes high background noise, which seriously affects the sensitivity and stability of the detection system. To reduce the effect, a novel design of planar grounded capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector (PG-C4D) based on printed circuit board (PCB) is proposed. The entire circuit plane except the sensing electrodes is covered by the ground electrode, greatly reducing the stray capacitance. The efficacy of the design has been verified by the electrical field simulation and the electrophoresis detection experiments of inorganic ions. The baseline intensity of the PG-C4D was less than 1/6 of that of the traditional C4D. The PG-C4D with the new design also demonstrated a good repeatability of migration time, peak area, and peak height (n = 5, relative standard deviation, RSD ≤ 0.3%, 3%, and 4%, respectively), and good linear coefficients within the range of 0.05–0.75 mM (R² ≥ 0.986). The detection sensitivity of K⁺, Na⁺, and Li⁺ reached 0.05, 0.1, and 0.1 mM respectively. Those results prove that the new design is an effective and economical approach which can improve sensitivity and repeatability of a PCB based PG-C4D, which indicate a great application potential in agricultural and environmental monitoring.

Application of Capillary Electrophoresis for Determination of Inorganic Analytes in Waters

Aside from HPLC and GC, capillary electrophoresis (CE) is one of the most important techniques for high-performance separations in modern analytical chemistry. Its main advantages are the possibility of using different detection techniques, the possibility of in-capillary sample processing for preconcentration or derivatization, and ease of instrumental miniaturization down to the microfluidic scale. Those features are utilized in the separation of macromolecules in biochemistry and in genetic investigations, but they can be also used in determinations of inorganic ions in water analysis. This review, based on about 100 original research works, presents applications of CE methods in water analysis reported in recent decade, mostly regarding conductivity detection or indirect UV detection. The developed applications include analysis of high salinity sea waters, as well as analysis of other surface waters and drinking waters.

Capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection for microfluidic capillary isoelectric focusing

We report capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C4D) of proteins separated by microfluidic capillary isoelectric focusing (μCIEF). To elucidate the evolution of negative conductivity peaks during focusing and seek IEF conditions for sensitive conductivity detection, numerical simulation was performed using a model protein GFP (green fluorescence protein) and hypothetical carrier ampholytes (CAs). C4D was successfully applied to the μCIEF by optimizing assay conditions using a simple and effective pressure-mobilization approach. The conductivity and fluorescence signals of a focused GFP band were co-detected, confirming that the obtained negative C4D peak could be attributed to the actual protein, not the non-uniform background conductivity profile of the focused CAs. GFP concentrations of 10 nM-30 μM was quantified with a detection limit of 10 nM. Finally, the resolving power was analyzed by separating a mixture of R-phycoerythrin (pI 5.01), GFP-F64L (pI 5.48), and RK-GFP (pI 6.02). The conductivities of the three separated fluorescence proteins were measured with average separation resolution of 2.06. We expect the newly developed label-free μCIEF-C4D technique to be widely adopted as a portable, electronics-only protein-analysis tool.