Separation of synthetic inorganic polymers of condensed phosphates by capillary gel electrophoresis with indirect photometric detection

Separation of synthetic inorganic polymers of condensed phosphates was carried out by capillary gel electrophoresis with indirect photometric detection. Pyromellitic acid was employed as ultraviolet (UV) absorbing background electrolyte and absorbance of UV was measured at 254 nm. The separation of condensed phosphates in 12% (w/v) linear polyacrylamide gel was found to be mainly dependent on the size of the separands, but charge-to-size ratio played a part in the migration behaviour of orthophosphate and metaphosphates. The results presented in this paper demonstrate that the combination of capillary gel electrophoresis with indirect photometric detection provides a highly efficient and universal method which should be useful for the characterization of nonabsorbing ionic polymers. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.