Determination of chloride, chlorate and perchlorate by PDMS microchip electrophoresis with indirect amperometric detection.

In this work, chloride, chlorate and perchlorate are fast separated on PDMS microchip and detected via in-channel indirect amperometric detection mode. With PDMS/PDMS microchip treated by oxygen plasma, anions chloride (Cl-), chlorate (ClO3-), and perchlorate (ClO4-) are separated within 35s. Some parameters including buffer salt concentration, buffer pH, separation voltage and detection potential are investigated in detail. The separation conditions using 15 mM (pH 6.12) of 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (MES)+L-histidine (L-His) as running buffer, -2000 V as separation voltage and 0.7 V as detection potential are optimized. Under this condition, the detection limits of Cl-, ClO3-, and ClO4- are 1.9, 3.6, and 2.8 microM, respectively.