Two decades of high temperature gas chromatography (1983–2003): what's next?

Abstract

The evolution of the concept of High Temperature High Resolution Gas Chromatography (HT-HRGC) is presented together with examples highlighting its potentialities. The range of molecular weight and number of functional groups present in the molecules eluting at higher temperature, far exceeds (Kovats Indices of 120) the usual HRGC range for analytes (Kovats Indices of 40–45). With usual column lengths and film thickness, this will already extend the range of analytes by 400 Da. Short, thin film columns would acme another 500 Da to the molecular weight window traditionally dealt with by HRGC. This range (∼700–1500 Da) can be surpassed by molecules presenting peculiar structures, the ceiling being ∼5000 Da. It is currently tackled only for peptides, oligosaccharides and a few polymers, by conventional analytical techniques. However, higher molecular weight analogues of all other organic species and yet unknown carbon skeletons have been neglected because this range was only poorly accessible to usual analytical techniques dealing with complex mistures.