Towards a radiation-tolerant contactless conductivity detector for use with capillary electrophoresis systems in spaceflight applications

The simplicity, versatility, and ease of miniaturization capillary electrophoresis with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (CE-C4D) has led to its application for the analysis a wide range inorganic organic species. While C4D detectors have relatively straightforward electronics, no designs specifically focused on spaceflight applications been developed. challenge lies in limited set components tolerant high radiation levels large temperature ranges when designing electronics planetary science missions. In this work we present prototype designed environments over 50–300 krad total ionizing dose (TID). proposed design, including selection components, compatibility main differences compared an open source version detector (OpenC4D) are discussed detail. This was also allow monitoring up three capillaries measurement redundancy. Rad Hard assembled using COTS equivalents radiation-hardened counterparts, performance evaluated by comparison commercial device. Additionally, reagents used astrobiology CE-C4D method developed previously were investigated long-term storage levels. No loss observed exposed 300 TID stored 2 years at room temperature.