Split/Splitless Inlets in Gas Chromatography: What’s Up with All Those Different Glass Inlet Liners?

Abstract

Over the winter break at the university where I work, I was ordering consumables for the upcoming semester. As I was browsing the web pages at a major vendor for glass inlet liners, I was again impressed by the many glass inlet liner options and geometries available for split and splitless inlets, still by far the most used today. In this installment, we review the processes that happen in the inlet when a sample is injected, and use this to make some sense of the many available inlet liner configurations. We generate some best practices and guidelines in selecting an inlet liner, but we see that there is no one single liner that fits all situations. Selecting the best inlet liner should be a step in all method development involving split or splitless injections.