"Hydrophobic chromatography", which is a variation of reverse phase chromatography, is applicable to the analysis of cephalosporin C derivatives, especially in fermentation broths. Unfortunately, there are no commercial C18 columns which are entirely suitable for this class of compounds.For this reason C18 columns were prepared by an in-situ bonding technique and were optimally designed for cephalosporin C derivatives.Mono-, di-and trifunctional octadecyl bonding agents were used with 10 Ftm silica of both 60 A and 100 A pore diameter. The best results were obtained with the difunctional agent, methyloctadecyldichlorosilane, and 100 A silica. "Endcapping" of residual silanol groups with a trimethylsilylation agent was optional, since good results were obtained with both a plain C18 column and one that was "endcapped" ."Hydrophobic chromatography" is a variation of the reverse phase technique in which a neat (i .e., no organic component) aqueous solvent is used as the mobile phase. This mode of chromatography is very useful for the analysis of polar ionic compounds. In particular, it is well suited for the separation and quantitation of cephalosporin C derivatives, especially in fermentation broths.In a previous papery we described hydrophobic conditions for the separation of cephalosporin C using a large particle (37-50 icm), medium efficiency C18 column. In a second paper2) we presented an improved method for the analysis of cephalosporin C derivatives using a small particle (10,um), high efficiency column prepared in-house by chemically bonding octadecyltrichlorosilane to silica by an insitu technique. An in-situ column was used because no commercially available column was completely satisfactory for use in the hydrophobic mode. Poor efficiencies and broad asymmetrical peaks are often obtained with commercial columns. In addition, both retention and resolution properties are inadequate, especially with early eluting compounds such as deacetylcephalosporin C and deacetoxycephalosporin C.Cephalosporin C derivatives have been separated by us3) and others4) with reverse phase ion-pair chromatography.The principal advantage of this approach is that early eluting compounds such as deacetylcephalosporin C and deacetoxycephalosporin C are retained on the column long enough to be well separated from interfering substances in fermentation broths. However, with a properly prepared in-situ column as described in this paper, good separations can be obtained without the need for ion-pairing.The work2) that we reported previously on the hydrophobic chromatography of cephalosporin C derivatives employed an in-situ C18 column. However, at that time there was no attempt made to discover the optimum conditions for producing these in-situ columns. This paper gives the results of a study that was carried out on the preparation of C18 columns especially suited for the hydrophobic