Polyion‐Sensitive Polymeric Membrane‐Based Pulstrode as a Potentiometric Detector in Liquid Chromatography

Potentiometric polyion‐sensitive polymeric membrane electrodes are capable of detecting a wide variety of polyionic macromolecules. Herein, we utilize this lack of selectivity to report the first application of this sensor technology as a detector in liquid chromatography (LC). A reversible polycation pulstrode based on tridodecylmethylammonium‐dinonylnaphthalene sulfonate doped within a polymeric membrane is employed as the LC detector. Poly‐arginines/protamine mixtures are separated by cation‐exchange/affinity chromatography on an immobilized heparin column, with eluted polycation peptide bands clearly observed via the pulstrode detector. The LC‐pulstrode system is further applied to follow the production of different polycation peptides derived from thermolysin catalyzed protamine digestion.