Stellan Hjertén's contribution to the development of monolithic stationary phases

Abstract

This overview is presented to celebrate the birthday of one of the luminaries of the separation science and my friend - Stellan Hjertén. He made significant contributions to a variety of areas in separation science such as electrophoresis, LC, and CEC to name just a few. Since the scope of his work was enormous, this review will focus only on a single aspect of his scientific activities, the design and applications of monolithic materials. During the years starting from 1989, Stellan Hjertén published many excellent papers concerning the preparation of acrylamide chemistry-based monoliths and their use in both micro-HPLC and CEC. The following text details his works in the field.

Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes as functional monomer to prepare hybrid monolithic columns for capillary electrochromatography and capillary liquid chromatography

“…These excellent advantages have made the monolithic columns an attractive alternative to the packed and open-tubular columns in the field of microscale separation, including CEC and capillary liquid chromatography (cLC) [16][17][18][19][20]. The process of monolithic materials affords a variety of surface chemistries for the requirement of small and large molecules in several separation modes.…”

My favorite materials: Porous polymer monoliths

“…HjertØn refined his technology later and the acrylamide gels were applied in both LC and CEC. His contributions to the monolithic technology are summarized in a recent review article [14].…”

Monolithic columns: A historical overview

“…Although these columns were not genuine monoliths since they consisted of compressed irregular gel particles and did not exhibit any permanent porous structure, their format was more “continuous” than that of typical packed columns. Most importantly, these compressed gels were counterintuitively well permeable and the separations were largely independent of the flow rate .…”