Description
In liquid chromatography, the progress made in speed and resolution over the past 15 years has been tremendous. With sub-2 mm particles, UHPLC pressures and core-shell particles, we can now achieve 4 times more theoretical plates or do separations 10 times faster than in 2002. Quite impressive, especially considering the field was during this same period already perceived by many as being fully matured.At present, we can wonder what will be next, and some even argue we have reached the end of the line. For most of the progress realized in LC was obtained by making ever smaller and smaller particles and concomitantly larger pressure, and the problems with extra-column band-broadening, viscous heating, liquid compressibility,…seem to prevent a further reduction of the particle size. In other words, some argue HPLC’s progress, which has been following its own version of Moore’s law over the past decades, is now facing a hard stop.
In the present contribution, it will be argued that maybe we have indeed played all our trumps in increasing the pressure and reducing the size, but also there is still a lot to be gained by playing on the shape and homogeneity of our supports. We should not forget the sphere is only one of the many possible shapes. Just think of monoliths, perfusion particles, pillar arrays,… Because of their higher intrinsic permeability, these structures have a far better “chromatographic shape” than the packed bed of spheres. Measured by Golay’s and Knox’s separation impedance number, these structures hold the promise of a 10-fold increase in efficiency (for the same time) and even a 100-fold reduction of the analysis time (for the same efficiency). Unfortunately, these approaches have not delivered their promise yet. Some because of the lack of order, some because the size of the individual elements is still too large, and some suffer from both problems. However, with new materials engineering possibilities such as silicon micromachining and 3D printing and new materials synthesis methods rapidly gaining widespread availability and improving in performance, it is written in the stars we will one day see a commercially viable production technology that will be able to produce the perfect chromatographic column, breaking away from Moore’s law by trading in our spherical particles for supports with a much more advantageous shape as measured by Golay’s and Knox’s separation impedance.
| Periode | 18 jun. 2017 |
|---|---|
| Evenementstitel | HPLC 2017: 45th International Symposium on High Performance Liquid Phase Separations and Related Techniques |
| Evenementstype | Conference |
| Locatie | Prague, Czech RepublicToon op kaart |
| Mate van erkenning | International |