RK-Spectro Technical Note 73: Determination of your experimental dead time in fluorescence mode using μFC-08 and SFM-4000/S

Introduction

This technical note explains how to calculate the experimental dead time of your stopped-flow instrument. The Technical Note presupposes that the user understands how to design a stopped-flow sequence and use Bio-kine software correctly. The dead time of a stopped-flow experiment refers to the age of the solution when it reaches the observation point; in other words, it is the time necessary for the mixed solution to go from the center of the last mixer to the observation point. Besides the total flow rate and cuvette volume, the dead time depends on many other different factors. In this Technical Note, only the flow rate and cuvette volume influences will be discussed. Because of the hydrodynamics phenomenon, it is difficult to take into account software calculations, a slight difference between the estimated dead time (given by the Bio-kine software) and the real dead time may be observed.