Chapter 3 - Practical Approaches to Column Selection for Supercritical Fluid Chromatography

Abstract

Advances in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) have, for the most part, followed the technological breakthroughs in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). This should not be surprising, as SFC is can be considered a variant of HPLC, which differs mainly in its use of a highly compressible fluid as the majority component of the mobile phase. However, it is precisely this difference differentiates SFC from other chromatographic techniques and has resulted in a steady resurgence of mainstream applications, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. On the one hand, sample solubility, stationary phase selectivity, and the modifier solvent all dictate selectivity and retention in SFC, while providing broad range parameters to optimize a specific separation. However, these same operating parameters, including temperature, pressure, particle size, and column dimension, can all diminish the effectiveness of a separation. In this chapter, we will focus on these and other column technological advancements as well as some practical considerations for obtaining a successful separation, with the goal of providing advice on how to select a column and compare how columns with similar surface chemistries differ from each other.