Small particle liquid chromatography efficiency

Modern high-performance liquid chromatography has been developed to a very high level of performance by the introduction of selective stationary phases of small particle sizes, resulting in efficient columns with large plate numbers per litre. 

Many nonvolatile and thermally labile allelochemicals can be well separated by liquid chromatography (LC). Identification of the separated components on-line by mass spectrometry (MS) is of great value. Fused-silica LC columns of 0.22 mm ID packed with small-particle material are used in the described LC/MS system. The shape of the column end allows direct connection to a electron impact ion source of a magnetic sector mass spectrometer. Separations by LC are reported and LC/MS mass spectra are shown for monoterpenes, diterpene acids, phenolic acids and cardiac glycosides. The LC/MS system provides identification capability and high-efficiency chromatography with a universal detector. 

There is much interest in high-efficiency- and high-speed separation media for liquid chromatography. The plate numbers available in practice have been in the range of 10,000-30,000 in HPLC for 20 years or so, but these are low compared to well over 100,000 theoretical plates in capillary gas chromatography or in capillary electrophoresis. This is caused by the limitation in the use of small-sized particles for HPLC, where a particle-packed column is commonly used under a pressure-drop of up to 40 MPa. An increase in column efficiency by using small particles, which is the approach taken in the past, is accompanied by an increase in the pressure-drop, as expected from Eqns. 5.2 and 5.3, below. Eqns. 5.1-3 describe the efficiency (plate height) and flow resistance of a column packed with particles [1-3], where N stands for the... 

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