Improved Capillary Electrophoresis Method with a New Buffer for the Determination of Major Cations in Soil Extracts

Abstract

Determination of major cations in soil extracts is important for soil research. This study introduced a new buffer system (Buf-I) for capillary-zone electrophoresis (CZE) for the detection of major cations in soil. The Buf-I system achieved baseline separation of major cations with a wider detection range, in less time, and with better reproducibility than the old buffer system (Buf-M). Storage stability and running stability experiments showed that the running current of Buf-I was also more stable and the relative standard deviation (RSD%) was significantly less than those of Buf-M. The recovery (91.13–107.64%) by Buf-I was better than that (78.38–103.87%) by Buf-M. The results by Buf-I method were highly consistent with traditional analysis techniques (with a correlation of 0.9963). Therefore, we conclude that the new Buf-I system is more stable and accurate than the old Buf-M system and is especially suitable to determine major cations in soil extract.

Keywords:

• CZE determination
• major cations
• new buffer
• soil extracts

Acknowledgments

This work was supported financially by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Knowledge Innovation Project (KSCX2-YW-N-002), the National Natural Science Foundation of China–Japan Science and Technology Agency Strategic Cooperative Project (30821140542), and the National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB109303).