Capillary electrophoresis in forensic chemistry

A recent search performed on the Pubmed database using as specific keywords “capillary electrophoresis AND forensic chemistry” retrieved 186 references between 1993 and 2011. The reason of the increasing use of CE can be found in the intrinsic characteristics of this peculiar analytical technique, which allow for its use in a great variety of separation modes (electrophoretic, electrokinetic, chromatography-like etc), using different detection systems (from UV absorbance to mass-spectrometry), thus enabling the detection of the widest range of compounds including inorganic ions, small organic molecules, chiral compounds, macromolecules and even intact viruses and cells. The purpose of the present chapter is to discuss selected methods published by leading research groups in forensic chemistry, in order to offer to the reader the tools to find by himself solutions to important and still open problems in forensic chemistry. Moreover the chapter presents recent review papers, covering the most important CE applications to forensic chemistry to which the readers are referred for more detailed information.