Deviation from Ohm’s law in electric field assisted capillary liquid chromatography

Earlier studies of electric field assisted LC (EF-LC) have shown that the effect on charged analytes of the application of an electric field over a capillary LC column is relatively small. Charged analytes can only be affected by the electric field while present in the mobile phase, which makes the effective time for influence of the electric field t0 independent of retention time. Because the charged analytes only can be affected for a short time the electric field strength ought to be high in order to increase the impact of the electric field on the separation. We have, however, found that only a relatively low electric field strength can be used in EF-LC when pressure is used as main driving force. The useful field strength was limited by a dramatic increase in the current. This increase in current was found to origin from an increased concentration of buffer ions that have an electrophoretic mobility towards the pumped flow.