Serially coupled capillary columns supercritical fluid chromatography with a coupling restrictor.

Abstract

A serially coupled column system for capillary supercritical fluid chromatography was constructed by connecting two capillary columns of different polarities using or without using a coupling restrictor. The influence of the column sequence, the size of the coupling restrictor and the column temperature on the polarity of the system were studied. The system without a coupling restrictor (the directly coupled system) provided an intermediate polarity between two columns, depending on the column geometry, such as the film thickness and column length, although it slightly shifted to that of the first column. In the system with a coupling restrictor, the contribution of the second column to the overall retention increased with its resistance. The use of a coupling restrictor allowed to control the polarity of the coupled system virtually over the whole range between two columns. The temperature was an additional effective parameter for tuning the polarity of the system.