Fast liquid chromatography for method development

摘要

Agoal for an analytical scientist in the industrial setting is to develop faster methods without sacrificing quality. In chromatography, especially for purity/impurity analysis, this means eluting components faster while maintaining efficiency and selectivity. A recent innovation of packing HPLC columns with sub-2 um particles has made it possible to perform fast chromatographic separations with high efficiency. Columns packed with sub-2 um particles have the advantage of being more efficient than columns packed with 3.5 and 5 um particles and are also able to better maintain their efficiency at linear velocities greater than the optimum linear velocity. The reason for both these phenomena is that as particle size decreases, the distance that analyte molecules must diffuse out of the particle is diminished or, in other terms, reduces the resistance to mass transfer [1]. The overall impact is that separations on columns packed with sub-2 um particles can be performed using much higher flow rates with corresponding shorter run times with minimal sacrifices to separation efficiency.