Research Initiation Awards: Enhanced Micellar Electrokinetic Capillary Chromatography for Bioseparations

胶束电动毛细管色谱(MECC)是高效毛细管电泳法(HPCE)的工作模式之一，专为分离中性化合物或中性化合物和带电化合物的混合物而设计。中性化合物根据其在水相和胶束相疏水内部的不同分配而被分离。毛细管电泳法结合了毛细管电泳法的高分离效率和高效液相色谱仪对中性化合物的分辨能力。MECC是一种重要的生物、生化和医药领域的新分离方法。MECC的一个根本问题是其保留窗口有限。这一障碍限制了分离分辨率和MECC能够分离的组分的数量。增加保留窗口范围的一种简单方法涉及直接控制电渗透。提出了利用毛细管外外加电场直接动态控制电渗的方法。利用提出的电容模型，从实验和理论上研究了这种方法的基本原理。以氨基酸为模型体系，测试了氨基酸的分离分辨率，并与以往的方法进行了比较。

Micellar Electrokinetic Capillary Chromatography (MECC) is one of the operational modes of High Performance Capillary Electrophoresis (HPCE) specifically designed for the separation of neutral compounds or mixtures of neutral and charged compounds. Neutral compounds are separated based on their differential partitioning between the aqueous phase and the hydrophobic interior of the micellar phase. MECC combines the strengths of capillary electrophoresis with its high separation efficiency and liquid chromatography with its resolving power of neutral compounds. MECC is an important new separation method for biological, biochemical, and pharmaceutical applications. A fundamental problem in MECC is its limited retention window. This obstacle limits the separation resolution and the number of components capable of being separated by MECC. An easy way for increasing the range of the retention window involves the direct control of electroosmosis. The use of an additional electric field applied from outside of the capillary for directly and dynamically controlling electroosmosis is proposed. The fundamentals of this approach are studied experimentally and theoretically with a proposed capacitor model. The separation resolution of amino acids as model systems are tested and compared to that of previous methods.