ADVANCES IN CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS - THE CHALLENGES TO LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY AND CONVENTIONAL ELECTROPHORESIS

In the 1980s, capillary electrophoresis (CE) developed rapidly into a first-class analytical separation technique. Its advances in instrumentation and method development will not only enhance or complement existing mature separation techniques such as liquid chromatography and conventional slab gel electrophoresis, but will also severely challenge these separation methods. A brief overview of the most striking achievements of CE in the 1980s is given, which illustrates the challenges to liquid chromatography and conventional slab gel electrophoresis, and some detailed discussions are presented to highlight the advantages of CE. New developments in CE that can be expected for the 1990s include especially column technology, separation chemistry and instrumentation, which will serve further to diversify and improve the applicability of this technique in areas which are poorly addressed by other separation methods. This paper considers and speculates on the technological advancements that can be expected to emerge for CE in the 1990s.