Evaporative light scattering detection: trends in its analytical uses.

Evaporative light scattering detection (ELSD) is widely recognized as a universal tool for liquid and supercritical chromatographies. In addition, this detection technique is fully compatible with continuous-flow systems. In fact, the combination of continuous non-chromatographic techniques and ELSD affords the design of simple, reliable systems for extracting qualitative information. This paper reviews instrumental innovations regarding the miniaturization of evaporative light scattering detectors and their uses in micro and capillary liquid chromatography; also, it discusses their increasingly important role in the development of vanguard configurations for sample screening and the determination of total indices without the need for chromatographic separation. Moreover, it compares them with other types of chromatographic detectors in terms of performance. Finally, the potential of ELSD for solving real-life analytical problems arising from the need to meet (bio)chemical information needs is illustrated with various selected applications.