Ion exchange resin bead decoupled high-pressure electroosmotic pump.

We describe an electroosmotic pump (EOP) that utilizes a cation exchange resin bead as the electric field decoupler. The resin bead serves as a electrical grounding joint without fluid leakage, thus eliminating electrolytic gas interference from the flow channels. The arrangement is easy to practice from readily available components, displays a very low electrical resistance, and is capable of bearing high backpressure (at least 3200 psi). We use a silica xerogel column as the EOP element to pump water and demonstrate a complete capillary ion chromatograph (CIC), which uses a similar bead based microelectrodialytic generator (micro-EDG) to generate a KOH eluent from the pumped water. We observed good operational stability of the complete arrangement over long periods.