On-site and in-vivo strategies for instrument and method development, a sustainable alternative for the new generation of analytical chemists

The instrumental developments of capillary electrophoresis (CE) over the last decade are reported. This mostly concerns the shift from the bench-top to the portable CE set-up for on-site analyses, development of sampling, separation, and detection systems resulting in miniaturized and handheld CE instruments, and downscaling the injection and liquid handling systems for true microsampling. The unattended operation and coupling of sample pretreatment to on-line injection, separation, and quantification, are also reviewed. User-friendly freeware instrument control and data processing, as well as modular construction of low-cost and fully automated CE systems, are covered, too. Last but not least, recent technological innovations, such as 3D printing, and their advancements in the development of novel instruments for CE are also presented. The exceptionally high research activities demonstrated in this article corroborate that even more than 40 years after the introduction of modern CE, the technique is alive and facing new analytical challenges.