CAPILLARY ELECTROCHROMATOGRAPHY IN COLUMNS PACKED BY CENTRIPETAL FORCES

Important factors in packing capillary columns for capillary electroch romatography (CEC) are emphasized and a new method to pack capillary c olumns is introduced. The new method uses centripetal forces to drive the packing material into the column. Advantages of this approach are that it offers a high impact velocity, avoids large pressure drops dur ing packing, and provides for packing more than one capillary at once. Under normal conditions, using a commercially available CE unit, and performing detection after the packing bed, capillary columns packed b y this new approach showed separation efficiencies similar to those ob tained by pressure and electrokinetic packing. Columns with inner diam eters between 31 and 75 mu m packed by the new approach showed similar performance. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.