Strategies for Analyzing Cephalosporins by Microemulsion Electrokinetic Chromatography

We studied microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) for the analysis of cefazolin, cefoperazone and cephalexin. We compared the separation of the cephalosporins obtained by MEEKC at a high pH and at a low pH. Good separations of the compounds were achieved within 9 min by both methods. To reduce the analysis time, we used the "short-end" injection technique. We also present two on-line preconcentrations of the analytes by sample stacking, reversed electrode polarity stacking mode (REPSM) (at high-pH) and stacking with reverse migrating pseudostationary phase (SRMP) (at low-pH). We also report parameters for validation such as linearity and limit of detection. Our results show that the developed methods are suitable for analyzing these three cephalosporins.