Recent advances in the development and application of microemulsion EKC

Microemulsion EKC (MEEKC) is an electrodriven separation technique. Separations are typically achieved using oil-in-water microemulsions, which are composed of nanometre-sized oil droplets suspended in an aqueous buffer. The droplets are stabilised by a surfactant and a cosurfactant. The novel use of water-in-oil microemulsions has also been investigated. This review summarises the advances in the development of MEEKC separations and also the different areas of application including determination of log P values, pharmaceutical applications, chiral analysis, natural products and bioanalytical separations and the use of new methods such as multiplexed MEEKC and high speed MEEKC. Recent applications (2004-2006) are tabulated for each area with microemulsion composition details.