Field amplified stacking injection - capillary electrophoresis for quantitative analysis of released methacrylic acid from dental composites

Field-amplified stacking injection-capillary electrophoresis (FASI-CE) appl ied for the first time to the study of dental materials is demonstrated in this report. CE was used to separate methacrylic acid from the other degrad ed components. Due to the background electrolyte being weakly basic and met hacrylic acid being negatively charged, in-capillary enrichment of the anal yte was achieved by FASI. A detection limit of less than 50 ppb was obtaine d with good reproducibility (relative standard deviation < 3%). The method was applied to the analysis of four commercially available dental composite s. Results showed that FASI-CE was effective in monitoring the fabrication process and product quality of restorative materials fabricated from methac rylate-based composites by analyzing the amount of methacrylic acid release d from the residual methacrylate monomers.