Separation techniques

The past two years have seen continued development of capillary electrophoresis methods. The separation performance of flowable sieving media now equals, and in some respects exceeds, that provided by gels. The application of microfabrication techniques to separation science is gaining pace. There is a continuing trend towards miniaturization and integration of separation with preparative or analytical steps. Innovative separation methods based on microfabrication technology include electrophoresis in purpose-designed molecular sieves, dielectric, trapping using microelectrodes, and force-free motion in Brownian ratchets.