Submicrosecond dead time determination – SFM-2000 series – Rapid kinetics – Application Note 15

Abstract

Deadtime is one of the most critical performance specifications in stopped-flow technology as it is correlated with the maximum observable rate that can be observed in a stopped-flow experiment since it represents the age of the reaction at the observation point in the cuvette. In short, the smaller the dead time is, the faster the rate of the reaction can be and still be observed reliably. This application note illustrates the performance of SFM-series of stopped-flows from Bio-Logic with a standard cuvette and the micro cuvette accessory to measure very fast reactions by following the reduction of dichlorophenolindophenol by ascorbic acid. Increasing concentrations of ascorbic acid were used to reduce DCIP at a flow rate of 20 ml/s until the reaction was completed within the dead time of the instrument. The dead time for these experiments using the Neperian logarithm was 200 sec for the micro cuvette accessory and 700 microsec for a standard cuvette allowing for rates of ~ 3500 s-1 (three times faster than the closet competitor) and ~ 1000 s-1, for each cuvette respectively, to be comfortably observed.

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