Microcolumn liquid chromatography: instrumentation, detection and applications

Abstract

This review discusses many different aspects of microcolumn liquid chromatography (LC) and reflects the areas of microcolumn LC research interest over the past decades. A brief theoretical discussion on a number of major issues, such as column characterisation, chromatographic dilution effects and extracolumn band broadening in microcolumn LC is given. Recent progress in column technology and the demands and developments of instrumentation and accessories for microcolumn LC are also reviewed. Besides that, the developments in a large number of established and also more recent detection techniques for microcolumn LC are also discussed. The potential of hyphenation of microcolumn LC with other techniques, more particularly of multidimensional chromatography and microcolumn LC coupled to mass spectrometry is reviewed. Finally, the perspective of microcolumn LC separation methods is stressed by a number of relevant applications.

Influence of a strong sample solvent on analyte dispersion in chromatographic columns

“…This effect is taken to profit for analyzing components present in trace amounts in the sample. Indeed, very large sample volumes can then be introduced in the column, which leaves a sufficiently large amount of these trace analytes in the column for leading to high enough detection signal-to-noise ratios at the column outlet and precise enough quantitative analysis [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. If, instead, the sample solvent is stronger than the mobile phase, the analyte migration velocity in the sample solvent is larger than in the mobile phase.…”

Theory and Practice of UHPLC and UHPLC–MS

“…of capillary columns is in the range of 100e500 mm for CLC, 10e100 mm for nano-LC (Vissers et al, 1997;Saito et al, 2004), and 10e350 mm for CEC (Eeltink et al, 2003). Usually columns consist of a fused silica capillary or a polyether ether ketone (PEEK) tube (Szumski and Buszewski, 2002;Cappiello et al, 1991).…”

“…Therefore, to increase the sensitivity when using the miniaturized technique, some approaches have been proposed to overcome the mentioned drawbacks, allowing analysts to applying nano-LC to real samples analysis. Among the different solutions proposed, the use of (1) sensitive and specific detectors, e.g., MS, (2) UV-detector cells with extended path length, (3) on-column focusing (Mills et al, 1997;Cappiello et al, 2002;Rocco et al, 2013b;Buonasera et al, 2009), and (4) pre-and/or 2D-column preconcentration are currently employed (Vissers et al, 1997).…”

Measurement and Modeling of Extra-Column Effects Due to Injection and Connections in Capillary Liquid Chromatography

“…Theoretical and practical descriptions of ECBB have been detailed previously [14,28,[54][55][56][57] and are summarized here for relevant discussion of the results.…”