Bonded dimethylacrylamide as a permanent coating for capillary electrophoresis.

A method for coating capillaries for capillary electrophoresis with chemically bonded polydimethylacrylamide has been developed, and the properties of the capillaries have been evaluated. The coated capillaries provided high separation efficiency, 12 x 10(5) theoretical plates/m was obtained for cytochrome c. The electroosmotic flow at pH 8.0 was 10 x 10(-10) to 6 x 10(-10) m2 V(-1) s(-1). The coated capillaries were quite stable at high pH. At least 150 runs could be done at pH 10 without appreciable performance deterioration. The excellent performance of the coated capillaries was illustrated by separation of basic proteins, acidic proteins, 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate-derivatized neurotransmitter amino acids, peptide reference mixtures and peptides digested from a bacteria protein.