HPLC instrumentation evaporative light scattering detector

Other widely used detectors for HPLC include refractive index (RI), fluorescence and evaporative light-scattering (ELS). The use of Rl and ELS detectors for pantothenic acid analysis in multivitamin dietary supplements has not been reported. The main reason is that the two detectors are not selective and thus cannot resolve pantothenic acid from other components existing in a multivitamin dietary supplement. Although fluorescence detection can be highly selective depending on the application, pantothenic acid does not have fluorescence excitation and emission and so fluorescence detection cannot be used for pantothenic acid analysis unless derivatization methods are applied (Pakin et al. 2004 Takahashi et al. 2009). Derivatization adds more complexity to analytical method and should not be used unless neeessary. For deteetion and quantitation of pantothenic add in multivitamin dietary supplements with HPLC/UHPLC, a highly selective detector such as MS should be the instrument of choice. 

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