Chiral Separations using Miniaturized Techniques: State of the Art and Perspectives

Abstract

The separation and analysis of chiral compounds is an important topic of research, because these analytes are involved in various processes, e.g., biological, pharmacological, human health, etc. Their separation has also been recently obtained utilizing microfluidic techniques, such as capillary electrophoresis (CE), electrochromatography (CEC), and capillary/nano‐liquid chromatography (CLC/nano‐LC). Enantiomeric separation is mainly obtained by applying the direct resolution method, where a chiral selector (CS) is present in the separation system, either added to the mobile phase (MP) or bonded to the stationary phase or to the capillary wall. Among the several CSs used in microfluidic techniques, cyclodextrins, proteins, peptides, glycopeptide antibiotics, and modified polysaccharides are the most employed. Microfluidic techniques can offer several advantages over conventional analytical tools, e.g., high efficiency, high mass sensitivity, and reduced volumes of MP and sample. Optimized methods have been applied in different fields, such as biomedical, food chemistry, environment, pharmaceutical, etc. Excellent results have been achieved in CE and nano‐LC. Although CEC can offer higher efficiency due to the use of a strong electroosmotic flow, its use is less popular than the other. This limitation can be explained with the limited number of the stationary phases (SPs) commercially available.

Recent advances in the application of capillary electromigration methods for food analysis and Foodomics

“…Moreover, food quality validation as well as the evaluation of other biological properties of foods imply the use of robust, efficient, sensitive, and cost‐effective analytical methodologies. CE has been applied to analyze a huge number of food matrices related to either food analysis or Foodomics , as can be also confirmed by the information given in Table . Thus, due to its high separation efficiency and speed, together with the extremely small sample and reagents requirements, CE has demonstrated to be a very useful analytical tool in food science.…”

“…Thus, due to its high separation efficiency and speed, together with the extremely small sample and reagents requirements, CE has demonstrated to be a very useful analytical tool in food science. Table summarizes the main review papers published within the period covered by this work on capillary electrodriven techniques in food analysis and Foodomics . As can be seen, recent applications of CE‐MS in metabolomics or recent developments in CE‐MS , as well as detection schemes for CE , chiral methods , concentration procedures , and miniaturized CE systems have been recently reviewed.…”

Sub-2 μm Silica Particles in Chiral Separation

“…This area needs considerable attention as solvent efficient narrow-bore columns have already become mainstream for 'greener' chromatography [50]. For ultrafast separations, the sub-2-μm totally porous particles provide better solutions [18,48].…”

Enantiomers separation by capillary electrochromatography using polysaccharide‐based stationary phases

“…Enantiomer separation has been performed utilizing different analytical techniques such as GC, TLC, SFC, HPLC, and CE [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”