This Phase I SBIR award provides funds to construct solid state beta-ray detectors for use in capillary electrophoresis. Electrophoresis is one of the most important and widely used analytical techniques for the separation and identification of biological molecules. Recently, there has been a significant advance in electrophoresis technology through the use of gel geometries involving thin capillary tubes. This technology has been developed into a new separation technique, capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) and is particularly appropriate for the separation of low abundance materials. This technique provides much greater resolution than traditional electrophoresis techniques and can achieve separations of complex mixtures as much as an order of magnitude faster. The CZE technology is currently of very high interest since it appears to make possible the development of new, high speed instrumentation for analytical biochemistry. However, in order to make full use of this new, powerful separation technique, several aspects of the technology require further development. This project addresses the particular need for a nuclear detection system which will allow CZE to be used effectively for the more common separation experiments carried out in molecular biology laboratories.
