Charged aerosol detection in pharmaceutical analysis

Due to its wide field of application, sensitivity, wide range of linearity and the applicability to gradient elution, the most common detection technique for HPLC nowadays is UV/vis spectrophotometry. However, UV/vis detection comes to its limits when the analytes are lacking suitable chromophors or exhibit very different UV responses. In the past years, different types of evaporation/aerosol based HPLC detectors have been developed to fill this gap in HPLC detection. Amongst those, the corona-charged aerosol detector (CAD) is one of the most powerful and versatile representatives. In the recent past a variety of papers have been published, demonstrating the potential of the CAD in different fields of analytical chemistry. This paper is intended to provide an overview of the key performance characteristics and manifold applications for HPLC-CAD in the field of pharmaceutical analysis.