Determination of environmentally relevant aromatic amines in the ppt levels by cation selective exhaustive injection-sweeping-micellar electrokinetic chromatography

Abstract

Environmentally important aromatic amines are determined by micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) with UV detection. Using a combination of field-enhanced sample injection in the capillary zone electrophoresis format (performed for a longer period than usual, e.g., 200 s at high voltages; cation selective exhaustive injection) and sweeping in the MEKC format, from 10(4)- to 10(5)-fold improvements in detector response are achieved for all positively chargeable test analytes. Preliminary results indicate that limits of detection for the positively chargeable aromatic amines are in the parts per trillion (ppt) levels.