On the Issue of Characteristic Evaporative Light Scattering Detector Response

In recent years, the evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) has increasingly been used in conjunction with liquid chromatography for detection of various analytes. Due to the specificity of the detection method, which is based on the scattering of laser light on the non-volatile analyte particles, the ELSD has been considered a universal detector. This article presents issues concerned with the response of this detector. A review of experimental results presented by researchers who used the detector in question clearly show that two major issues tend to recur. Interestingly enough, the researchers do not have a uniform opinion on those issues. First, the majority of authors treat the detector signal as a mass signal, i.e., the response is believed to depend only on the analyte mass. Second, a number of different approaches are offered to analyze how the detector signal depends on analyte mass.