Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become a powerful technique for the analysis of a wide variety of inorganic and organic compounds. 1 The technique provides rapid resolution and minimum solvent consumption and is appropriate to samples that are difficult to separate by gas or liquid chromatography.Anionic surfactants are now indispensable additives as dispersants and detergents in a variety of industrial and consumer applications. Usually commercial surfactants are homologous mixtures where the hydrocarbon chain may vary from C 8 to C 20 . The need to determine anionic surfactants and their composition in raw materials and product formulations is obvious for quality control and for extensive applications of the surfactants. Gas chromatography (GC) 2 and liquid chromatography (LC) [3][4][5][6] have been considered to meet this requirement. In GC, however, time-consuming and often complex derivatization procedures to convert into volatile compounds are required. LC methods with anion exchangers or reversed phases have been widely used, but there are problems associated with strong sorption or incomplete separation of the components.Recently, a number of reports have appeared on the usefulness of CE techniques for anionic surfactants; 7-11 however, few applications besides alkanesulfonates and alkyl sulfates surfactants have been reported. Since CE methods have the potential to be applicable to most classes of anionic surfactants, further development in this method would be of widespread interest. The present paper reports the CE analysis of C 12 -C 18 Nacyl-L-glutamates surfactants, widely used for excellent cosmetic ingredients because of lack of irritation for human skin and good biodegradability. 13 This approach is important for rapid resolution of the homologous mixture, because the alkyl length closely relates to the solubility, Krafft point, critical micelle concentration, and foaming power of the studied surfactants. We describe here the optimization of the operating conditions for the determination of the surfactants using capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). In particular, we discuss the effects of addition of organic solvents to the buffer solution on the separation of the analytes.
Experimental
ApparatusAll electropherograms were generated using a CAPI-3100 capillary electrophoresis instrument (Otsuka Electronics, Osaka, Japan). Fused-silica capillaries with 75 µm i.d. were used as separation tubes. The total capillary length was 50 cm and the effective capillary length was 37.8 cm.
ReagentsThree kinds of monosodium N-acyl-L-glutamates for cosmetic ingredients were supplied by Ajinomoto Co. (Tokyo, Japan). Their acyl radicals were as follows: lauroyl (C 12 ); myristoyl (C 14 ); mixture of palmitoyl and stearoyl (C 16 -C 18 ). Sodium tetraborate, used for an electrolyte, was of reagent grade with 99% purity from Kokusan Chemical (Tokyo, Japan). All other reagents were of reagent grade from different manufacturers, and were used without further purification. Research & Development Division, KOSÉ Corp...