The Applied Side of Capillary Electrophoresis: A Critical View

Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) has demonstrated its wide potential to solve many analytical problems. Recent developments in CE with contributions for sample preparation, improvements in detection and aspects associated with application and productivity requirements in routine laboratories are reviewed and discussed. Although these capabilities of CE, the transference of CE methods to routine analytical work is very limited. The main contributions and advantages of CE with respect other instrumental separation techniques are summarized in this article, and also the scarce use in routine laboratories is critically discussed. After this balance, the arguments to identify the ‘analytical niche’ of CE in applied analytical laboratories are reported.