Isotachophoresis on a chip with indirect fluorescence detection as a field deployable system for analysis of carboxylic acids

ITP with indirect fluorescence detection (IFD) was introduced three decades ago. Despite this fact, the method has never become widely adopted. The main aim of this work was to utilize the ITP-IFD for the separation of carboxylic acids by using a commercially available, portable, microfluidic chip electrophoresis system. On the 16.8-mm effective length separation channel, a maximum of eight carboxylic acids could be separated, with LOD values in a range from 0.12 to 0.4 mM. The commercial chips used for all experiments have multichannel structures important for analysis of more than one sample per a chip in case of standard use. This multichannel structure was used to investigate the possibility of multiple sample loading for ITP separation. Application of ITP-IFD was investigated for analysis of benzoate in diet soft drinks and the results were in good agreement with results of a CE method.