Positively charged sol-gel coatings for on-line preconcentration of amino acids in capillary electrophoresis

A novel on-line method is presented for the extraction and preconcentration of amino acids using a sol-gel-coated column coupled to a conventional UV/visible detector. The presented approach does not require any additional modification of the commercially available standard CE instrument. Extraction, stacking, and focusing techniques were used in the preconcentration procedures. Sol-gel coatings were created by using N-octadecyldimethyl[3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl]ammonium chloride (C18-TMS) in the coating sol solutions. Due to the presence of a positively charged quaternary ammonium moiety in C18-TMS, the resulting sol-gel coating carried a positive charge. For extraction, the pH of the samples was properly adjusted to impart a net negative charge to amino acids. A long plug of the sample was then passed through the sol-gel-coated capillary to facilitate extraction via electrostatic interaction between the positively charged sol-gel coating and the negatively charged amino acid molecules. Focusing of the extracted amino acids was accomplished through desorption of the extracted amino acid molecules carried out by local pH change. Two different methods are described. Both methods showed excellent extraction and preconcentration effects. Preconcentration results obtained on sol-gel-coated columns were compared with the CZE analysis performed on bare fused-silica columns with traditional sample injections. The described procedure provided a 150,000-fold enrichment effect for alanine. The two methods provided acceptable repeatability in terms of both peak height and migration time.