Chapter 8 - Hyphenated techniques

Abstract

Developments in technology, chemistry, and physics have led to novel chemical and analytical techniques, and also expanding the techniques already in use. Hyphenated techniques are formed from technological coupling of different analytical techniques, such as separation technique, usually chromatography, and detection technique, usually spectroscopy. The coupling of chromatographic techniques and spectroscopic techniques makes hyphenated techniques more attractive and widely applicable in almost all fields of science, biology, geography, engineering, agriculture, etc. While chromatographic techniques produce pure or almost pure chemical constituents in mixtures, spectroscopic techniques produce selective information to identify components using library spectra or standards. Hyphenated techniques can be double or triple techniques combined together. Hyphenated techniques such as gas chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy, thermogravimetry tandem gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy, liquid chromatography tandem nuclear magnetic resonance, gas chromatography tandem infrared spectroscopy, and capillary electrophoresis tandem mass spectrometry have been widely applied in many fields for various kinds of analyses. There is need to explore more coupling of other novel analytical techniques to improve efficiency in bioscientific studies and applications.