Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography MECK

Other chromatography-related techniques such as GC (Zhang et al, 2002), micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MECK) (Sakodinskaya et al, 1992) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) Qesiderio et al, 2000) have been much less used. 

CE can be operated in several modes. The approach described in the previous paragraph is referred to as capillary zone electrophoresis, or CZE. A variant called capillary gel electrophoresis uses a capillary tube filled with gel, essentially a miniaturized version of slab-gel techniques. The third variant, and the one of most forensic significance, is micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEK or MECK). MEK is a modification designed to improve the separation of neutral spedes, which are easily separated from cations and anions, but not well separated among themselves. 

Addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in concentrations greater than that required for micelle formation ensures holdup of species that may interfere, and facilitates separation of other species in the sample that may be of interest. This is called micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MECK). Apart from requiring a very small sample, an advantage of CE is that once the compound/s of interest has/have eluted, the remainder of the sample can be rapidly rinsed from the column using pressure or suction. 

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