Comparison of Resolving Power and Separation Time in Thermal Field-Flow Fractionation, Hydrodynamic Chromatography, and Size-Exclusion Chromatography

Abstract

Comparison of resolving power and separation time in thermal field-flow fractionation, hydrodynamic chromatography, and size-exclusion chromatography. Stegeman, G.; van Asten, A.C.; Kraak, J.C.; Poppe, H.; Tijssen, R. Published in: Analytical Chemistry DOI:10.1021/ac00079a033Link to publication Citation for published version (APA):Stegeman, G., van Asten, A. C., Kraak, J. C., Poppe, H., & Tijssen, R. (1994). Comparison of resolving power and separation time in thermal field-flow fractionation, hydrodynamic chromatography, and size-exclusion chromatography. Analytical Chemistry, 66, 1147. DOI: 10.1021/ac00079a033 General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. The most important chromatographic separation methods for characterizing the molecular mass distribution of polymers are thermal field-flow fractionation (TFFF), hydrodynamic chromatography (HDC), and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). A comparison of the capabilities of these methods is of great value to select the best technique for a particular analytical purpose.For an objective comparison, the choice of the performance parameters is crucial. This choice is obviously rather arbitrary because the performance of a separation method can be judged from many different viewpoints. As the goal of each method is to obtain a highly accurate molecular mass distribution in the shortest possible time, we regard the resolving power and the analysis speed as the most important performance features just as in nearly all other chromatographic techniques. Investigating these two aspects will therefore be the main focal point in this study. Other important performance criteria that can be put forward are the peak capacity, the dynamic molecular mass range, and the useful separation range. In this respect also convenience and technical feasibility may be mentioned.Yau and Kirkland compared the capabilities of sedimentation FFF, HDC, and SEC.' They evaluated several features including resolving power, dynamic range of macromolecular size, absolute size range, and peak capacity. To obtain a common basis for comparison, they derived performance parameters which were normalized in terms of fractional differences in solute size. These parameters could be applied to methods for size separation in general. Literature data on se...

Detection and characterization of engineered nanoparticles in food and the environment

“…This gives versatility in terms of selecting the carrier composition to favor colloidal stability, thus minimizing wall and membrane interactions and particle-particle interactions. Stegeman et al (1994) compared the resolving power and separation time in thermal field-flow fractionation (TFFF), hydrodynamic chromatography and size exclusion chromatography for the size separation of polymers, and concluded that TFFF theoretically has the best separation potential due to high selectivity, but this may not be exploitable in practice owing to the technical requirements. On the other hand, SEC was found to be the fastest method for low molecular masses (Stegeman et al 1994).…”

“…Stegeman et al (1994) compared the resolving power and separation time in thermal field-flow fractionation (TFFF), hydrodynamic chromatography and size exclusion chromatography for the size separation of polymers, and concluded that TFFF theoretically has the best separation potential due to high selectivity, but this may not be exploitable in practice owing to the technical requirements. On the other hand, SEC was found to be the fastest method for low molecular masses (Stegeman et al 1994). In general, FFF and HDC have a wider dynamic size range than SEC, while SEC has higher separation efficiency (less peak broadening).…”

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“…However, due to the high mass selectivity of ThFFF [43] the molecular mass distribution of the sample that is analyzed will usually also contribute significantly to the peak width of the observed signal. If each SEC fraction can be represented by a block function with a width corresponding to a change in the molecular diffusion coefficient of AD (this is only a simplification as polymer concentration can change within the time needed to collect a fraction), the standard deviation caused by the sampling process, expressed in units of molecular diffusion, is equal to [44] …”

“…12 [with P(/~) ~./~ -1] could be employed to obtain the/L values of the fractions. The mass selectivity can be rearranged to [43]: ' Calculated with b = 0.564 [47].…”

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“…1). In [7]- [9] it was shown that this principle could be used for chromatographic separations in fused silica capillaries with inner diameters in the micrometer range. Unfortunately, detection suffered from the low signal levels generated in the small detection volume.…”