Recent trends in capillary electrophoresis for complex samples analysis: A review

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Separation Science
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) has undergone continuous development since the 1980s.
• Advancements in separation procedures, detection systems, and miniaturization have expanded CE applications.
• Traditional disadvantages of CE are being overcome by new methodologies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent trends in Capillary Electrophoresis (CE).
• To discuss the application of these trends to high-complexity samples like biological fluids and individual cells.
• To analyze the advantages and disadvantages of novel CE approaches.

Main Methods:

• Review of capillary modification techniques (coatings).
• Exploration of microfluidic CE systems.
• Investigation of online microextraction coupled with CE.
• Discussion of recent application examples.

Main Results:

• Capillary coatings improve CE performance for complex matrices.
• Microfluidic CE offers enhanced separation efficiency and reduced sample consumption.
• Online microextraction-CE effectively pre-concentrates analytes from challenging samples.
• These methods demonstrate significant potential for analyzing biological samples.

Conclusions:

• Recent trends in CE, including capillary modification, microfluidic CE, and online microextraction, offer powerful solutions for complex sample analysis.
• These advanced CE techniques overcome previous limitations, enabling sensitive and versatile determination of analytes in biological fluids and cells.
• The reviewed approaches provide a foundation for future innovations in analytical science.