Performance Characteristics and Trends

Autosamplers have made significant progress in reliability and performance. Primary performance criteria are sampling precision and carryover. Precision levels of 0.2% relative standard deviation (RSD) and low carryover of 

An HPLC detector measures the concentration (or mass) of eluting analytes4 by monitoring one of their inherent properties, such as UV absorbance. A detector can be universal to all analytes or specific to particular classes of analytes. Common detectors and their attributes are listed in the Table 4.2. Early HPLC detectors are spectrometers equipped with small flow cells however, most modern units are compact and designed solely for HPLC. The ubiquitous UV/visible variable wavelength absorbance and the photodiode array detectors (PDA) are covered in more depth in this section. Note that mass spectrometers (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers (NMR) are discussed in the section on hyphenated systems. 

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