Recent Applications of Supercritical Fluid Chromatography in Modern Analysis: Updates from 2017 to 2020

Abstract

Background: Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is one of the powerful analytical techniques of the modern time. Recently, extensive analytical work has been reported and is in progress by utilizing the advanced features of SFC. Low solvent consumption, high sensitivity and solvent recovery make it advantageous over the traditional liquid chromatographic techniques. It utilizes supercritical fluids having properties of both liquid and gases making the applicability of this technique to wider range of analytes. Methods: Various research reports were collected from search engines like Sciencedirect, Pubmed, Researchgate and Google Scholar. Further upon through study of these reports, significant findings/data was collected and compiled under suitable headings. Important parameters/conditions utilized in methodologies were depicted with the help of tables. Results: It was found in various reports that SFC and its hyphenation with mass spectroscopy (MS), ultra violet spectroscopy (UV), high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), photo diode array detector (PDA), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), charged aerosol detector (CAD) etc. have made possible to quantify analytes even in ultra small concentrations in complex matrices. These techniques have been successfully employed for the quantification of a wide variety of analytes with excellent accuracy, selectivity and sensitivity. Conclusion: The present review highlights the recent applications of SFC techniques in various analytical fields such as pesticide analysis, vitamin analysis, enantioseparation, lipid analysis, drug metabolite estimation, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and steroid analysis. Reports from 2017 to 2020 have been included in this compilation.