AG Huhn - Effect-based environmental analysis

Welcome to the group of analytical chemistry

Prof. Dr. Carolin Huhn

The group focuses on all levels of analytical chemistry, starting with development and optimization of new equipment and instrumental aspects, featuring the investigation of possibilities and limitations of analytical methods, their basic understanding and their validation. All methods are applied to real samples working together with cooperation partners from academia, hospitals and public authorities. For instrumental developments, both partners from industry and Universities of Applied Sciences are involved. The broad applicability of our developments and methods are demonstrated by various interdisciplinary applications in environmental sciences, biology and ecotoxicology, pharmacy and forensic sciences.

Our core areas are separation techniques, mainly electromigrative techniques. All capillary-based separation modes are employed such as capillary electrophoresis, isotachophoresis, micellar electrokinetic chromatography, isolelectric focusing and size sieving electrophoresis. Here, we also develop multidimensional electrophoretic techniques but also liquid chromatography. For detection we mostly use the coupling with mass spectrometry but also native laser-induced fluorescence and conductivity detection, which are further developed. The methods are applied for peptide analysis, forensic drug profiling and the analysis of trace compounds in environmental samples (water, soil and biota) including the identification of metabolites. In order to meet the enormous complexity of analytical tasks, our work also includes multidimensional separations, sample preparation strategies and preconcentration techqniues.