Recent advances in chiral separation of amino acids using capillary electromigration techniques

•Recent progresses in the chiral separation of amino acids have been discussed.•Different developments in electrodriven separation techniques have been examined.•Enantiorecognition of amino acids by using chiral selectors has been explored.

This review highlights recent progresses in the chiral recognition and separation of amino acid enantiomers obtained by capillary electromigration techniques, using different chiral selectors and especially cyclodextrins, covering the literature published from January 2010 to March 2014. Sections are dedicated to the use of derivatization reagents and to the possibility to enantioseparate underivatized amino acids by using either ligand exchange capillary electrophoresis (LECE) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) coupled on line with mass spectrometry. A short insight on frontier nanomaterials is also given.