Abstract

The analysis of volatile compounds relies heavily upon gas chromatography (GC) or mass spectrometry (MS) or the combination of GC-MS. Nonvolatile compounds present a more severe challenge to the analyst who frequently relies on liquid chromatography (LC) and in some cases of notable biological importance electrophoresis. But both these resolution techniques are distinctly inferior to the resolution routinely achieved for volatile compounds. To overcome this handicap, much emphasis has been placed on increasing the theoretical plate number of these separation techniques - - in the case of LC by the use of long microcolumns - - and in the case of electrophoresis by using capillary columns which reduce the adverse effects of Joule heating. In both cases the results are rather spectacular with separation power exceeding one million. However, these accomplishments carry with them a penalty in terms of volume of eluent to be analyzed and amount of analyte to be detected - - a penalty which stresses our best instrumentation. This talk summarizes progress on one method to meet this challenge, namely, the use of laser fluoresence excitation as a detection scheme for the minute quantities of effluent associated with the use of LC microcolumns or of open-tube high-voltage capillary electrophoresis.

© 1987 Optical Society of America