Examination of colour inkjet printing inks by capillary electrophoresis

The possibility of comparing inkjet printing inks by micellar electrokinetic capillary electrophoresis (MECC) with diode array detection was studied. An analytical procedure was designed and successfully applied to discriminate between the electrophoretic profiles of inks (extracted from paper) produced by five well-known manufacturers. The separation process was conducted in a polyimide-coated fused silica capillary (ID 50 μm, 60 cm total/50 cm effective length) with +30 kV high voltage applied. Background electrolyte was used of the following optimum composition: 40 mM sodium borate buffer, 20 mM sodium dodecyl sulphate(IV) (SDS) and 10% (v/v) acetonitrile (pH 9.56). The experimental conditions were adjusted in terms of resolution and analysis time. The best results were obtained at 10 and 25 °C storage and capillary temperature, respectively, using 25 dots (ø 0.8 mm) cut from printouts as the sample and BGE diluted with water (1:99, v/v) as the injecting solution. The MECC separation of main printing ink components by the proposed method showed excellent precision – the RSD value of the migration time calculated for each of the investigated peaks did not exceed 3.3%. The optimized method was applied to group identification and differentiation of: (a) three colours of printing inks, (b) inks from different manufacturers (Hewlett–Packard, Epson, Brother, Lexmark and Canon) and (c) inks from different printer models. In all these cases, inks were successfully differentiated on the basis of position (migration time) and shape of their characteristic peaks.