Capacitance-to-digital: a single chip detector for capillary electrophoresis

A capacitance-to-digital converter integrated circuit was implemented in an automated CE device as a single chip detector. In this paper, design and hardware issues related to the fabrication and application of a miniature detector for contactless measurement of complex impedance are discussed. The capacitance-to-digital converter integrated circuit was used as the whole detector. The advantage of this setup is that the single integrated circuit provides digital data and neither additional signal conditioning nor analog-to-digital converter is required. Different separation conditions were used to evaluate the detection characteristics of the constructed detection unit. A 1 μM LOD for sodium and a 1.6 μM LOD for potassium ions were revealed for the detector. The detection system designed is competitive with miniaturized contactless conductivity detectors or UV absorbance detectors with respect to overall parameters (sensitivity, resolution, power consumption properties, and size). The obtained separation and detection results show that such detection technique can be used as an extremely low power consuming and space saving solution for CE detection with potential applications in environmental monitoring, process control, and various analytical measurements.