Thermal Management

Abstract

The paper of Jorgenson and Lukacs published in 1981 [1] is often referred to as the starting point of modern CE. Still, in the years before this, several research groups [2, 3, 4] published on “free zone electrophoresis” in narrow tubes, which is essentially the same as CE. The break-through in 1981 was achieved by the improvement of the thermal management of the system, simply by decreasing the diameter of the separation channel. This scaling-down had become possible by two factors important for analytical chemistry. One factor was the development of (optically transparent) microcapillaries, first of Pyrex glass and later of fused silica. The other crucial factor for the development of CE was the availability of detectors suitable for the small volume scale employed. Jorgenson and Lukacs used oncolumn fluorescence detection.