Analyzing the response of a contactless conductivity detector in capillary electrophoresis by a resonant method

We report a resonant method to measure the wall capacitance（C_w） and solution resistance（R_S） in a capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector（C^4D）.Under the typical operating conditions in capillary electrophoresis（I.D.50μm,O.D. 360μm,electrode length of 4 mm,electrode gap of 1 mm,frequency of 200 kHz）,the values of C_w measured in 1 and 20 mmol/L NaCl solutions are 2.8 and 32 fF,which are only 1.1%and 12%of prediction by the equation in references,respectively.The value of R_S is less than the prediction in solutions withκ〈0.02 S/m.The response current of C^4D is due to the change in C_w because the total impedance of a C^4D is composed mainly by the impedance from C_w.

Simple and cost-effective determination of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride by electrical micro-titration

By employing an electrical micro-titration system, in which a capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector（C^4D） was used to monitor the reaction process in real time, herein a novel method for determining ciprofloxacin hydrochloride（CIPHCl） was developed for the first time. Mode 1： Standard CIPHCl solutions at different concentrations were loaded into reaction cells, respectively, and were titrated with standard Ag^＋. Upon the titration, the formation of a precipitate alters the number of ions in the solution, raising the change of conductivity, which was monitored by a special C-4 D to construct a titration curve. The endpoint of the titration was located from the peak of the curve. Between the elapsed time and the initial concentration of titrand, a linear relationship was established over the range of2.0–8.0 mmol/L. Mode 2： Standard Fe^3＋ took the place of Ag^＋, and was used as titrant to recognize ciprofloxacin contributed to the formation of complexation, which also resulting a change of solution conductivity. Under optimized conditions, a working range of 1.0–5.0 mmol/L CIPHCl was found. Because the reaction solutions were isolated from the working electrodes, this pioneer work shows significant simplicity and cost-effectiveness, by eliminating the requirements for detector exchange/renewal between different measurements, and by involving no auxiliary chemicals. Both of the two approaches were applied successfully to determine CIPHCl in tablet samples. And the results were in good agreement with those obtained by reference method.