Development of an Aerosol Chemiluminescent Detector Coupled to Capillary Electrophoresis for Saccharide Analysis

A novel aerosol chemiluminescent (CL) detector coupling to capillary electrophoresis (CE) for the detection of saccharides is reported. This CL detector is composed of a postcapillary nebulizer and porous alumina as catalyzer in quartz tube. The CL emission could be generated due to the catalyzing oxidization of saccharides on the surface of porous alumina. The saccharides such as sucrose, alpha-lactose, maltose, raffinose, galactose, xylose, and glucose with only weak UV absorbance can be successfully detected. The linear ranges of those saccharides are from 30-2000 to 50-2000 mg/L; relative standard deviations range from 2.1 to 3.7% (200 mg/L, n = 11). Compared with the traditional UV detector currently used in CE, this novel detector shows the advantage of high sensitivity to the compounds with only weak UV absorption. Thus, it could be an important supplement of CE detectors for UV-lacking compounds.