Acetonitrile Stacking: Serum Phenobarbital as an Example

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has several advantages, such as high resolution, speed, and low cost of operation. However, it suffers from two major drawbacks: poor detection limits and matrix effects. Several approaches have been used to overcome these two problems. Here, acetonitrile stacking (AS) is presented as a simple, easy, and practical approach that can solve these two problems for many analytes, with minimum sample preparation. This laboratory successfully used AS for the analysis of several compounds by CE (1 ).