Sheathless electrospray ionization interfaces for capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometric detection advantages and limitations.

A review of sheathless interfaces for capillary electrophoresis (CE)-mass spectrometry (MS) is presented. The review discusses the on-line CE-MS system requirements, advantages and weaknesses of current sheathless interface designs for CE-electrospray ionization MS, and comparison between sheath flow and sheathless interfaces. The advantages and limitations of three sheathless designs are discussed and commented upon, these include single-capillary, two-capillary and three-piece designs.