Recent advances in capillary electrophoresis instrumentation for the analysis of explosives

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a well-established analytical separation technique. Owing to its high versatility, major advancements have been made with regard to the instrumental set-ups during the last years. New strategies have been proposed to develop high-sensitive methods, portable CE or miniaturized devices. These techniques are of great interest in the analysis of explosives, which generally requires a highly selective approach. This review provides a recent perspective (from the beginning of 2008 to March 2015) on the use of CE for the analysis of explosives. First, a general description of explosives is made, emphasizing the role of separation techniques and specifically CE. Next, the most recent works focused on the analysis of explosives by using conventional CE, portable CE and microchip CE are compared and critically discussed. Besides, other emerging techniques for the analysis of explosives are referred and compared to CE results. Finally, future perspectives for the analysis of explosives by CE are proposed.