High-Throughput Multi-Capillary Electrophoresis

The potential of multi-capillary electrophoresis (CE) for high-throughput analysis of legacy CE applications was investigated by optimisation of the separation of six pharmaceutical compounds on a single-capillary instrument, followed by transference of the method to an eight-capillary BioPhase 8800 system from SCIEX. Multi-CE had superior performance, allowing construction of calibration curves in a single run, and a five-fold reduction of run time per sample, improved linearity, accuracy and limits of detection. Method transfer from the single-capillary system required minor instrumental parameter adjustments using the same background electrolyte. The potential of multi-CE was shown via quantification of caffeine in a variety of energy drinks, demonstrating broad applicability where high-throughput and rapid analyses are desirable.