Sodium dodecyl sulfate solution is an effective between-run rinse for capillary electrophoresis of samples in biological matrices

It is common practice in capillary electrophoresis to perform some sort of capillary washing step(s) between separations. In many analyses little consideration is given to optimization of the wash, and typically a rather standard washing procedure is used involving a few minutes wash with 0.1M NaOH followed by a few minutes reconditioning with the run buffer. As an alternative to this procedure, we have investigated the use of wash solutions containing sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). This type of wash has been used in the analyses of both small molecules and proteins, with encouraging results. After the SDS wash, the electroosmotic flow has been shown to be restored to values close to normal in a capillary which had previously been coated with plasma proteins. Separation efficiency for a test compound (dextromethorphan) is improved if an SDS rather than a HCl---NaOH wash is used after injection of plasma. In a direct-injection analysis of plasma proteins using a pH 10 borate buffer, an SDS-based washing procedure (total time, 1 min) gave better migration-time reproducibility than an NaOH-based wash, which took 5 min in total.