Systematic approach to cost- and time-effective method development with a starter kit for chiral separations by capillary electrophoresis

In capillary electrophoresis, the use of cyclodextrins (CDs) as additive in the background electrolyte plays a very important role in achieving enantiomeric resolution. The wide range of available CD derivatives contained in commercial kits provides several possibilities for method development (LC·GC Int., 9 (1996) 88. [1]). The advantage of the large selection of CD derivatives and the application guidelines provided by the kits make method development versatile. A disadvantage, however, is often the difficulty at the starting point to choose which CD or modified CD to use. Most of the guidelines suggest complicated multistep selection methods assuming that all information about the analyte is available. In this paper the Elphodextrin starter kit from Cyclolab, Hungary has been evaluated. An easy, step-by-step protocol is developed to speed up the CD selection procedure and the analytical method development, even if the character of the analyte is unknown. The applicability of the Elphodextrin starter kit for the separation of neutral, acidic and basic enantiomers is demonstrated.