Physical Chemistry on Separations in Liquid Chromatography

Influence of Physical Chemistry on Separations in Liquid Chromatography... 

Adsorption from liquids onto solid adsorbents is widely utilized in liquid chromatography (HPLC, see Chapter 11,4), described in detail in physical chemistry and instrumental methods textbooks, e.g. in [16]. The separation by HPLC is based on adsorption-desorption kinetics, i.e. on how long various dissolved compounds remain present in the adsorbed state. The average time, ta, during which molecules are present in an adsorption layer is... 

According to International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (lUPAC)," chromatography is a physical method of separation in which the components to be separated are distributed between two phases, one of which is stationary while the other moves in a definite direction. HPLC is then defined as an analytical separation technique used to detect and quantitate analytes of interest in more or less complex mixtures and matrices that uses elevated pressures to force the liquid through the bed of the stationary phase. " The bed is most often located in a column. Since almost four decades of its inception, HPLC technique has advanced and there is enormous literature available on this technique. 

Capillary electrophoretic separations are performed in small diameter tubes, made of Teflon, polyethylene, and other materials. The most frequently used material is fused silica. Fused silica capillaries are relatively inexpensive and are available in different internal and external diameters. An important advantage of a fused silica capillary is that the inner surface can be modified easily by either chemical or physical means. The chemistry of the silica surface is well established due to the popularity of silica surfaces in gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC). In capillary electrophoresis, the silica surface is responsible for the EOF. Using surface modification techniques, the zeta potential and correspondingly the EOF can be varied or eliminated. Column fabrication has been done on microchips.13... 

The two basic questions in high-performance liquid chromatography focus on (a) how particular compounds can be separated, and (b) why particular compounds were separated by the liquid chromatographic method used. The answers can be obtained by the consideration of some simple representative chromatograms of the separation of well-known compounds. Such separations can be easily understood according to common principles of physics and chemistry. 

This chapter deals with the properties of high-pressure liquid chromatography columns. It is divided into two sections column physics and column chemistry. In the section on column physics, we discuss the properties that influence column performance, such as particle size, column length and column diameter, together with the effect of instrumentation on the quality of a separation. In the section on column chemistry, we examine in depth the surfaces of modern packings, as well as the newer developments such as zirconia-hased packings, hybrid packings or monoliths. We have also included a short section on... 

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