Evaluation of band broadening in chemiluminescence detection coupled to pressurized capillary electrochromatography with an off-column coaxial flow interface

A system of off-column coaxial flow chemiluminescence (CL) detection coupled to pressurized CEC (pCEC) was described. The interface utilized a reactor that introduced postcolumn CL reagent into the capillary effluents in a sheathing flow profile. To compare and evaluate band broadening of analytes caused by the detector, the typical CL compounds luminol and N-(4-aminobutyl)-N-ethylisoluminol (ABEI) were separated and detected by pCEC or capillary HPLC (cHPLC) coupled to CL and UV detector, respectively. The results demonstrated that the band broadening caused by off-column detection interface was minimized due to the fast kinetic nature of the CL reaction. With the proposed pCEC-CL system, the detection limits of luminol and ABEI were 1.0x10(-8) and 8.0x10(-8) mol/L, respectively, which were approximately 100-fold more sensitive than those obtained with UV absorption. In addition, separation and detection of the ABEI-labeled L-lysine (L-Lys) and L-arginine (L-Arg) were accomplished by pCEC-CL method based on the principle of ABEI-potassium ferricyanide-alkaline medium CL reaction system. Under the optimum conditions, good results could be achieved compared with pCEC-UV.