Simultaneous determination of anions by capillary electrophoresis: Characteristics and applications

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) encompasses a number of characteristics quite suitable for the simultaneous analysis of small ions such as high efficiency and resolving pow er, directly associated to its impressively high peak capacity, and short analysis time. In appropriate conditions, it is possible to perform the separation of approximately 36 anions in less than 3 minutes. In this work, the mechanisms by which anion analysis is performed was criteriously discussed, and a thorough review of the literature in the past 5 years, focusing mostly in applications of CE to anion analysis in real matrices, was presented.