Dispersion effects of laminar flow and spray chamber volume in capillary electrophoresis–inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry: a numerical and experimental approach

Band broadening related to laminar flow and spray chamber dead volume is a potential problem in flow injection (FI)–inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). We studied these two dispersion effects with a sheath flow capillary electrophoresis (CE)–ICP-MS interface. A numerical model was used to simulate advection diffusion processes in the CE-capillary and dispersion in the spray chamber. Experimental results of FI with this CE–ICP-MS interface agree well with numerical modeling results. Dispersion due to laminar flow depends strongly on capillary diameter and analyte diffusion coefficient and to a lesser extent on laminar velocity and capillary length and typically amounts to one order of magnitude peak width increase. Three spray chambers of 5, 20 and 150 ml dead volume showed an increase in band broadening and peak tailing with increasing dead volume. The use of standard Scott-type spray chambers (>90 ml volume) increases peak widths by 5–10 s regardless of injection time. The use of a low dead volume spray chamber is recommended for experiments where resolution is critical. The modeling approach can be extended to the coupling of other flow injection techniques, like micro-LC and nano-LC with ICP-MS.