Calibration of migration times of variable salinity samples with internal standards in capillary electrophoresis

A practical approach is presented for identifying the analyte peaks stacked by transient ITP (TITP) in samples of uncontrolled salinity. For TITP with chloride ions acting as the leading electrolyte, the effect of matrix chloride of an unknown concentration was calibrated using multiple internal standards to predict the migration times of weakly acidic anionic analytes behaving as strong electrolytes to an accuracy of over 99.9%. The calibration equations for the migration time of an analyte are given as a function of the migration times of internal standards using the mobilities of the relevant ions as parameters. The effects of matrix chloride and various separation conditions such as the temperature, plug length, ionic strength, and pH of the BGE were completely eliminated from the calibration equations. In addition, the actual mobilities, determined for a standard saline sample under the working conditions, were used, and thus, there was no need to conduct supplementary experiments to determine the absolute mobilities at infinite dilution. The internal standards were dyes, which were easily identified in an auxiliary channel monitoring the absorbance at a longer wavelength. For five standard saline matrices containing 100-300 mM NaCl at intervals of 50 mM, the mean absolute error (MAE) in migration times calibrated with two internal standards was 0.4 s (n=5x13). For an electropherogram of a real standard reference urine sample, peaks of spiked analytes were identified with an MAE of 0.9 s (n=13) without conductivity normalizing or desalting of the sample.