A Variable Column Length Strategy To Expedite Method Development

摘要

ABSTRACT: A variable length method development (or VL-MD)strategy,nexploiting the potential of an automatic column coupling system, is proposednandhasbeenappliedtoanumberofdifferent pharmaceutical and environ-nmental samples with a varying degree of complexity. The proposed strategynconsistently produced separation methods that had at least an equally goodncritical pair resolution and an equally short run time to those of methodsnproduced using commercially availableMDassistance software. In some cases,nthe VL-MD strategy allowed the MD time to be drastically shortened fromn>30 h to an overnight run of only 12 h. The developed strategy has thenpotential to become fully automated provided that reliable chromatogramnread-out software becomes available. The advantage of combining different stationary phase types to improve the available selectivity andnthe integration into the general VL-MD strategy was also demonstrated.