Separation of Explosives Using Capillary Electrochromatography

Abstract

The identification of explosives and their degradation products is important in forensic and environmental applications. Complete separation of these structurally similar compounds using reversed-phase liquid chromatography has proven to be a challenge. Here we present a demonstration of the use of capillary electrochromatography on the separation of a series of 14 nitroaromatic and nitramine explosive compounds. A separation with baseline resolution is achieved for all of the compounds in under 7 min, featuring efficiencies of over 500 000 theoretical plates/m. Using more aggressive running conditions, 13 of the 14 compounds are separated in under 2 min.