Capillary electrophoresis coupled on-line with ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) and resonance Raman spectroscopy (RRS) with excitation in the deep ultraviolet (UV) region (lambda(ex): 244 or 257 nm) were coupled on-line. The potential of this hyphenated technique, denoted as CE-UV-RRS, for analyte confirmation/identification purposes was explored with aromatic sulfonic acids and nucleotides as test compounds. Good-quality UV-RRS spectra could be recorded on-the-fly. Identification limits for the nucleotides were in the 10-125 microg/mL range. The RRS spectra showed sufficient characteristic features to enable analyte confirmation. In addition, the identification power of UV-RRS was studied with substituted pyrenes as model compounds. The compounds were distinguishable on the basis of their RRS spectra at 244 nm.