Comparison of universal detectors for high-temperature micro liquid chromatography

This study compares, through micro high-temperature liquid chromatography (μHTLC), three commercial universal detectors that allow a direct detection of lipids. The detectors are: the charged aerosol detector (CAD), the evaporative light-scattering detector (ELSD) and the ion trap mass spectrometer with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) and electrospray ionization (ESI) sources (APCI-MS and ESI-MS). This study shows the feasibility to use the high temperature with these detectors and hybrid behavior between concentration and mass flow rate detector in μHTLC. The detectors were compared in terms of response intensity, linearity and limit of detection for different high temperatures. The charged aerosol detector shows a linear response from 5 to 500 μg/mL and the correlation coefficients (r2) obtained for squalene, cholesterol and ceramide IIIB exceed 0.99.