Development of stationary phases for capillary-, pressurized capillary- and chip electrochromatographic applications

Capillary electrochromatography (CEC) is an analytical separation technique that was developed in the beginning of the 70's [1]. It combines the properties of two well-known separation techniques, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). It is an electro-osmotic driven separation technique that uses capillary columns.
However, CEC is currently characterized by some experimental drawbacks, making the technique not yet acknowledged as a fully matured separation technique.
This project will therefore has the goal to perform research for an improvement in columns technology by the development and testing of new stationary phases in order to obtain less fragile and more efficient columns, which will automatically increase the interest from industry if the technique can be made performant enough. In addition, it will be evaluated whether these stationary phases can be used in chip applications, which can be considered as the next step to take in the miniaturization of techniques.
The aimed stationary phases can be divided in two sub-groups:
- On one hand there are monolithic stationary phases, where a distinction is made between polymer- and silica-based ones.
- On the other hand there are sub-micronsized particle-based stationary phases.
For the considered types of stationary phases, their potential for pharmaceutical applications will be investigated, and more specifically in two domains: non-chiral applications in drug analysis and chiral applications.
Regarding applications, we will mainly focus on compendial analyses, for example of a drug and its impurities, and drug assays in pharmaceutical formulations.
This all should lead to the selection/development of suitable stationary phases for CEC analysis and should allow to investigate the full potential of CEC as separation technique