Applications and future perspectives of contactless impedance measuring detectors for capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

The science of today focuses on miniaturized techniques. Contactless conductivity detectors offer following advantages: cost effectiveness, high performance, simple integration, low energy consumption and possibility to miniaturize. Many of applications for capillary electrophoresis and ion chromatography coupled to first generation contactless conductivity detectors are described in literature [1]. Recently, the advances in electronics allowed of upgrading contactless conductivity detectors to second generation miniaturized single-chip based Capacitance-to-Digital detectors [2]. High performance, battery powered, portable wireless version of the Capacitance-to-Digital detector is described in literature as well [3]. Hardware improvements allows second generation Capacitance-to-Digital detectors to be used with portable capillary format instrumentation or stand-alone robotic rover. Third generation of impedance measuring detectors for capillary format separation includes Impedance-to-Digital systems, where spectra can be recorded during separation process. Hardware and design aspects will be discussed during the conference.