A gold foil covered fused silica capillary tip as a sheathless interface for coupling capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry.

•A simple but robust sheathless interface for coupling CE-MS has been developed.•The symmetrical tip obtained by HF etching was cover by a piece of gold foil.•It can produce a stable MS signal over the flow rate range 50 to 800 nL/min.•It can continuously work for at least 180 h.•The LOD for the alkaloids was determined as fmol level.