title: Moving beyond traditional UV-visible absorption detection: cavity ring-down spectroscopy for HPLC.
abstract: We describe the use of liquid-phase continuous-wave cavity ring-down spectroscopy for the detection of an HPLC separation. This technique builds on earlier work by Snyder and Zare using pulsed laser sources and improves upon commercially available UV-visible detectors by a factor of up to 50. The system employs a compact doubled-diode single-mode continuous-wave laser operating at 488 nm and a previously described Brewster's-angle flow cell. Ring-down time constants as long as 5.8 micros were observed with liquid samples in a 0.3-mm path length cell. The baseline noise during an HPLC separation was only 2 x 10(-7) absorbance units (AU) peak to peak, as compared to 1 x 10(-5) AU for a state-of-the-art commercial UV-visible detector.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5080, USA.
authors.forename: Kate L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Bechtel
authors.forename: Richard N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Zare
authors.forename: Alexander A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Kachanov
authors.forename: Steve S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Sanders
authors.forename: Barbara A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Paldus
mesh_terms: D002138:Calibration; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013056:Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet / Q000379:methods*