Simple in-house flow-injection capillary electrophoresis with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity method for the determination of colistin

Analysis of antibiotics by CE and CEC and their use as chiral selectors: An update

Natural, synthetic or semisynthetic antibiotics are highly used to prevent or treat diseases in humans and animals, and to promote animal growth. This fact makes that antibiotics residues or their transformation products may be present in food or in the environment after human or animal excretion. For this reason, it is imperative to develop reliable and sensitive analytical methodologies for their analysis. The main aim of this work is to present and discuss the most recent applications of capillary electromigration methods for the analysis of antibiotics, including the developments and applications of their use as chiral selectors in CE. The literature published from June 2015 to June 2017 is included following the previous review by Domínguez-Vega et al. (Electrophoresis, 2016, 37, 189-211). Information about the use of different detection systems, off-line and on-line strategies to improve sensitivity, and microchip devices for the analysis of antibiotics is provided and properly discussed.

Frequency-tuned contactless conductivity detector for the electrophoretic separation of clinical samples in capillaries with very small internal dimensions

An axial design of a capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector was tested in combination with fused-silica capillaries with internal diameters of 10, 15, and 25 μm, which are used for high-efficiency electrophoretic separation. The transmission of the signal in the detection probe dependent on the specific conductivity of the solution in the capillary in the range 0-278 mS.m^-1 has a complex character and a minimum appears on the curve at very low conductivities. The position of the minimum of the calibration dependence gradually shifts with decreasing frequency of the exciting signal from 1.0 to 0.25 MHz toward lower specific conductivity values. The presence of a minimum on the calibration curves is a natural property of the axial design of contactless conductivity detector, demonstrated by solution of the equivalent electrical circuit of the detection probe, and is specifically caused by the use of shielding foil. The behavior of contactless conductivity detector in the vicinity of the minimum was documented for practical separations of amino acids in solutions of 3.2 M acetic acid with addition of 0-50% v/v methanol.