CEC in Separation Science

CEC has the potential to generate higher plate numbers than LC, can provide high selectivity, and has higher sample capacity compared to CE. 

Despite these facts, CEC has not become a method that is very much used. One reason is that commercial dedicated CEC instalments are not available, CEC 

CEC can utilize the same type of stationary phase as in LC, but the stationary phase needs to be more carefully selected since it must assist in generating the EOF. Another problem with CEC is that the EOF may change over time as a function of adsorbed matter from injected complex samples. 

At present, no commercial producer makes dedicated CEC columns. However, several applications using CEC have been shown, using both aqueous and non-aqueous mobile phases, and the technique has a great potential for separation of complex samples as in proteomics and metabolomics because of the obtainable high efficiencies. 

1 Righetti, P.G. (2005) Electrophoresis the march of pennies, the march of dimes. Journal of Chromatography A, 

---