Wall deactivation with fluorosurfactants for capillary electrophoretic analysis of biomolecules

This paper describes the use of fluorosurfactants as buffer additives for capillary electrophoretic separation of proteins and peptides. Due to fluorosurfactant bilayer formation at the capillary inner wall, the surface charge can be adjusted and even reversed. If the running buffer pH is kept at a level where the proteins have the same sign of charge as the wall, electrostatic repulsion will be obtained. The protein wall adsorption can therefore be reduced and the separation performance can be noticeably increased. The separation performance can also be further improved by including mixtures of different types of fluorosurfactants in the running buffer. The buffer system can accordingly be adapted for a certain separation problem. Mechanisms for the use of fluorosurfactants for wall deactivation in capillary electrophoretic protein separations is discussed in the present work and some examples of applications are also presented.