Taylor Dispersion Analysis of Polysaccharides Using Backscattering Interferometry

Anal Chem. 2017 Jun 20;89(12):6710-6718. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b00946. Epub 2017 Jun 7.

Abstract

Taylor dispersion analysis (TDA) allows the determination of the molecular diffusion coefficient (D) or the hydrodynamic radius (Rh) of a solute from the peak broadening of a plug of solute in a laminar Poiseuille flow. The main limitation plaguing the broader applicability of TDA is the lack of a sensitive detection modality. UV absorption is typically used with TDA but is only suitable for UV-absorbing or derivatized compounds. In this work, we present a development of the TDA method for non-UV absorbing compounds by using a universal detector based on refractive index (RI) sensing with backscattering interferometry (BSI). BSI was interfaced to a capillary electrophoresis-UV instrument using a polyimide coated fused silica capillary and an in-house designed flow-cell assembly. Polysaccharides were selected to demonstrate the application of TDA-BSI for size characterization. Under the conditions of validity of TDA, D and Rh average values and the entire Rh distributions were obtained from the (poly)saccharide taylorgrams, including non-UV absorbing polymers.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't