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Capillary Electrophoresis (CE), known as high-performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) has established itself as an analytical technique with an extremely wide field of application. It originated by optimization of the basic electrophoretic principles largely applied in slab gels for use in an instrumental configuration. Through further development, CE was extended to include separation mechanisms typical of chromatography, thus becoming a versatile and flexible tool in separation science.
CE has found widespread application in analytical chemistry, biochemistry, and biotechnology as well as in various areas of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis, as witnessed by the increasing number of papers, books and symposia. CE is in its second decade of development and represents a valid complement to well established techniques such as liquid- and gas-chromatography.
The most attractive features of CE are its broad analytical spectrum (from inorganic ions to large DNA fragments), variety of separation modes (electrophoretic- and chromatography-like) and detection systems (including mass spectrometry), high separation efficiency (up to millions of theoretical plates) and mass-sensitivity (from femtomoles – 10-15 moles down to yoctomoles – 10-21 moles – with the most sensitive detectors), its negligible consumption of samples (nL) and solvents (few mL per day), easy and inexpensive operation and instrumental ruggedness.
All these characteristics fit exceptionally well the needs of drug and food analysis laboratories, biochemistry and biotechnology laboratories, and forensic science laboratories, all of them covering extremely diverse analytical problems.
The purpose of this Advanced Course is to give a complete and up-to-date overview of the applications of CE in the main analytical fields.
A short introduction to the basic concepts of the technique will be given to introduce users who are not familiar with CE.
On this basis, the CE Advanced Course is directed at providing a deeper knowledge and understanding of this powerful technique to potential users coming from universities, private companies and research institutions, in particular researchers and PhD students from the Medical, Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences.
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