Comparison of the responses of triacylglycerols with an evaporative visible light scattering detector used in conventional, micro and capillary liquid chromatography

During recent years, there has been a growing interest in the development of packed nano- and microchromatographies. It needs coupling the systems used to detectors adapted for microchromatographies. In the reported results, the properties of two different nebulizers of an evaporative visible Light scattering detector have been studied under different flow-rate conditions (conventional HPLC, micro-LC and capillary LC). In micro-LC and capillary LC, it is shown that the calibration curves gained for triacylglycerols analyzed in non-aqueous reversed-phase liquid chromatography could be statistically assimilated to a linear relationship even if they rigorously follow a well-known power relationship such as area = a.mass(b). This makes the establishment of the calibration curves easier in miniaturized chromatographies than in conventional ones. Depending on the chromatography used, the linear range falls between either 2-50 ng or 14-80 ng. The limit of quantification was 5 ng (S/N = 10). On the other hand, a study of the response of modified nebulizer versus flow-rate has shown that the modified evaporative visible light scattering detector is more complex than detectors whose response is really proportional to the concentration or to the mass. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.