ASMS 2026: Yifan Liu and How Low-Temperature HILIC Provides Enhanced Separations and Stability for LC-MS-Based Metabolomics

LCGC International spoke to Yifan Liu of Northeastern University (Boston, MA) regarding her presentation, Low-Temperature HILIC Provides Enhanced Separations and Stability for LC–MS-Based Metabolomics.

Here, prior to her presentation, Liu provides an overview of what will be covered, and how identifying limitations in her research resulted in experimenting with temperature improved peak performance.

“.In my talk, I describe how this project started when I noticed that the standard method for chromatographic separations in metabolomics, ZIC-HILIC, has back-pressure issues — the back pressure builds up across continuous injections. Alternative columns have improved back-pressure tolerance up to 1,000 bar, far exceeding the ZIC-HILIC column. However, I should also mention that there are two common methods for the HILIC column, and neither is perfect: one has peak-shape problems, and the other has retention-time drift. This pushed us to find a better solution. Conventionally, we started with high temperature, because higher temperature decreases the interaction of analytes with the column. But it went the opposite way — it actually made performance worse. That was a turning point. Then we tried low temperature, and, surprisingly, we found that peak performance was actually improved at low temperature. More interesting, we tested low temperature on other columns, such as BEH Amide and [unclear — see note], and found that the benefits of low temperature extend beyond the HILIC column to other BEH-based columns as well.”