Summary: | The objective of this research was to design and evaluate an instrumental method for electroanalysis in highly resistive media. A coulostatic detector for high performance liquid chromatography was designed and constructed. Equations were developed to describe the detector's performance under regenerative and nonregenerative experimental conditions. With mobile phases of high resistance, the detector was found to respond to both electroactive and ionic electroinactive species with the magnitude of the observed signal depending on the recent history of the electrode. Thus, the elimination of iR drop by the coulostatic method does not provide a straightforward method for electroanalysis in highly resistive media. At low electrolyte concentrations, double-layer effects become prominent. A method was devised to quantitate the static double-layer effect at solid electrodes.
|