Separation of enantiomers by capillary electrochromatography

The current popularity of capillary electrochromatography( CEC) has led to an increasing number of studies on the development and evaluation of enanti oselective CEC systems. These studies clearly demonstrate that the most pro minent advantage of electrically driven separation methods, the vastly incr eased column efficiency as compared to pressure-driven chromatography, can also be experimentally achieved for the separations of enantiomers. In anal ogy to high-performance liquid chromatography( HPLC) and capillary electrop horesist (CE), several approaches have been used. The addition of a chiral selector to the mobile phase is the simplest method. Less erroneous and mor e elegant approaches are those that use open-tubular, conventional packed, and monolithic columns containing chiral stationary phases that stereoselec tively interact with enantiomers. This review evaluates the new techniques and compares them to enantioselective HPLC and CE. Further, it describes th e various concepts of enantioselective CEC and focuses on the current 'stat e-of-the-art' column technology. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V .