Columns | Column: Column Watch

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In his final “Column Watch” article, Ron Majors looks into his crystal ball and discusses future needs in the area of HPLC/UHPLC column technology and related instrumentation. He looks at where current technology may be heading and makes a prediction that monolith-based columns may still have a rightful place in the HPLC/UHPLC laboratory .This article concludes his duration as a monthly columnist for LCGC.

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During the course of my scientific career beginning in the 1960s, I have grown up with the birth of modern LC column technology, the refinements of the instrumentation, and the development of widespread application of this most powerful separation and analysis technique. In this installment, I would like to share with you some of my observations and experiences with the beginning, the growth period, and the maturation of HPLC columns, where I have focused nearly 33 years of writing for this magazine. I will explore some of the early column breakthroughs beginning with the development of large superficially porous particles (SPP), the porous irregular and spherical microparticulate particles, inorganic and organic polymeric monoliths and the rebirth of the current generation of SPP. In next month’s installment I will look into my crystal ball and see what the future of HPLC and UHPLC holds.

HPLC 2015, chaired by Gérard Hopfgartner was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from June 21–25. This installment covers some of the highlights observed at the symposium including stationary phase developments, particle technology, and areas of growing application of HPLC. In addition, trends and perspectives on future developments in HPLC culled from the conference are presented.

 Volume 33 Number 4Pages 234-247This is our annual review of new liquid chromatography (LC) columns and accessories introduced at Pittcon and throughout the previous year. This year, Michael Swartz, former author of our "Innovations in HPLC" and "Validation Viewpoint" columns, steps in as a guest columnist to write the review.

 There has been a revival of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) in recent years, especially in the chiral preparative field, but also more recently in the analytical area. However, SFC is considerably more complex than liquid chromatography (LC), mainly because of the compressibility of the mobile phase. One can say that SFC is a "rubber variant" of LC where everything considered constant in LC varies in SFC. In this review, we go through advances in theory, instrumentation, and novel applications.

Highlights of the discussions on column-technology topics - such as monoliths, high-pH columns, SPPs, and HILIC - and an analysis of the larger trends observed at the conference.

Learn how to use selectivity throughout the sample analysis cycle, from the sampling stage through data analysis and report generation.