SURFACE PLASMON RESONANCE-BASED DETECTION - AN ALTERNATIVE TO REFRACTIVE INDEX DETECTION IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY

摘要

The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect was exploited to develop a detector responding to changes in the refractive index for use in high-performance liquid chromatography. The performance of the SPR detector was compared with that of a refractive index (RI) detector from Hewlett-Packard. The effects of the optical fibre connections and light-emitting diode wavelengths (1300 and 850 nm) were studied. The detectors that were tested provided similar limits of detection for the sugars, fructose (7 mu g for RI and 5 mu g for SPR), glucose (7 mu g for RI and 13 mu g for SPR) and sucrose (13 mu g for RI and 22 mu g for SPR). The SPR was found to reach a stable baseline quicker than the RI detector, i.e., 50 min before the RI detector did.