Solid Core versus Fully Porous Phase Materials

2 Monoliths and Solid Core versus Fully Porous Phase Materials 

Both concepts serve the demand of an improved efficiency to pressure ratio. While monolithic columns in spite of their continuous improvement over time still lag behind on efficiency [13], we find that the solid core materials outperform classical fully porous ones [14] of comparable particle size. Both concepts have two disadvantages though  

1) The choice of columns with different bondings and different base materials is still much smaller than that of totally porous particle packed ones. In terms of monolithic columns, this applies even more to the number of different manufacturers. 

2) The accessible stationary phase surface is smaller in relation to the column volumes, which results in a lower loading capacity and smaller retention factors compared with fully porous materials with an equivalent diameter of diffusion pores. 

These two disadvantages are less pronounced with solid core particles than with silica-based monolithic phases. Moreover, the retention behavior of every monolithic column can be considered one of a kind given the manufacturing process for the bonding. There are three more considerations with monolithic columns  

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