Sensitivity enhancement of fluorescence detection in CE by coupling and conducting excitation light with tapered optical fiber

This paper reports the enhancement of sensitivity of detection for in‐column fiber optic‐induced fluorescence detection system in CE by tapered optical fiber (TOF). Two types of optical fiber, TOF and conventional cylindrical optical fiber (COF), were employed to construct the CE (TOF‐CE and COF‐CE) and were compared for sensitivity to riboflavin (RF). The fluorescence intensities from a RF sample with excitation light sources and fibers at various coupling angles were investigated. The fluorescence signal from TOF‐CE was ca. ten times that of COF‐CE. In addition, the detection performance of four excitation light source‐fiber configurations including Laser‐TOF, Laser‐COF, LED‐TOF, and LED‐COF were compared. The LODs for RF were 0.21, 0.82, 0.80, and 7.5 nM, respectively, for the four excitation light source–fiber configurations. The results demonstrate that the sensitivity obtained by LED‐TOF is close to that of Laser‐COF. Both Laser‐TOF and LED‐TOF can greatly improve the sensitivity of detection in CE. TOF has the major attribute of collecting and focusing the excitation light intensity. Thus, the sensitivity obtained by LED‐TOF without focusing lens is just same as that of LED‐COF with a focusing lens. This demonstrates that the CE system can be further simplified by eliminating the focusing lens for excitation light. LED‐TOF‐CE and LED‐COF‐CE system were applied to the separation and determination of RF in real sample (green tea), respectively. The tapered fiber optic‐induced fluorescence detection system in CE is an ideal tool for trace analysis.