Control of electroosmotic flow by a cation additive to enhance the separation of amino acids by micellar electrokinetic chromatography

Determination of the authenticity of plastron-derived functional foods based on amino acid profiles analysed by MEKC

Plastron is a nutritive and superior functional food. Due to its limited supply yet enormous demands, some functional foods supposed to contain plastron may be forged with other substitutes. This paper reports a novel and simple method for determination of the authenticity of plastron-derived functional foods based on comparison of the amino acid (AA) profiles of plastron and its possible substitutes. By applying micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), 18 common AAs along with another 2 special AAs - hydroxyproline (Hyp) and hydroxylysine (Hyl) were detected in all plastron samples. Since chicken, egg, fish, milk, pork, nail and hair lacked of Hyp and Hyl, plastron could be easily distinguished. For those containing collagen, a statistical analysis technique - principal component analysis (PCA) was adopted and plastron was successfully distinguished. When applied the proposed method to authenticate turtle shell glue in the market, fake products were commonly found.

Recent advances of ionic liquids and polymeric ionic liquids in capillary electrophoresis and capillary electrochromatography

Ionic liquids (ILs) and polymeric ionic liquids (PILs) with unique and fascinating properties have drawn considerable interest for their use in separation science, especially in chromatographic techniques. In this article, significant contributions of ILs and PILs in the improvement of capillary electrophoresis and capillary electrochromatography are described, and a specific overview of the most relevant examples of their applications in the last five years is also given. Accordingly, some general conclusions and future perspectives in these areas are discussed.

Application of ionic liquids in liquid chromatography and electrodriven separation

Ionic liquids (ILs) are salts in the liquid state at ambient temperature, which are nonvolatile, nonflammable with high thermal stability and dissolve easily for a wide range of inorganic and organic materials. As a kind of potential green solvent, they show high efficiency and selectivity in the field of separation research, especially in instrumental analysis. Thus far, ILs have been successfully applied by many related researchers in high-performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis as chromatographic stationary phases, mobile phase additives or electroosmotic flow modifiers. This paper provides a detailed review of these applications in the study of natural products, foods, drugs and other fine chemicals. Furthermore, the prospects of ILs in liquid chromatographic and electrodriven techniques are discussed.

Phosphonium-based ionic liquids in electrokinetic capillary chromatography for the separation of neutral analytes

In this work we elucidated the applicability of phosphonium-based ionic liquids (ILs) as pseudostationary phase in electrokinetic capillary chromatography (EKC) with UV-detection. The phosphonium ILs studied contain bromide, chlorine, or tosylate ions, as counter ions, and alkyl side chains of variable length on the phosphorous atom. The effects of the type and concentration of the IL, pH, ionic strength, and type of background electrolyte solution on the electroosmotic flow (EOF) and on the effective electrophoretic mobilities of some neutral model analytes were investigated and large variations in the migration times were observed. Especially the IL employed remarkably affected the strength and direction of the EOF Successful separations were obtained for neutral aromatic singly substituted analytes, namely benzene, toluene, phenol, and nitrobenzene. The results demonstrated the potential of capillary electromigration methods for rapid interaction studies between ILs and analytes, which is useful for the development of novel materials for sample preparation and separation purposes or for novel catalyst and chemical processing studies.

MEKC as a powerful growing analytical technique

This review summarizes the principle and the developments in MEKC in terms of separation power, sensitivity, and detection approaches more than 25 years after its appearance. Newly used surfactants are mentioned. Classical and new sample concentration techniques in MEKC are described. The different detection approaches in MEKC with advantages, limitations, and future prospects are also discussed. This review highlights the wider application of MEKC in different analytical fields. Various recent selected applications of this technique in different analytical fields are reported.