Miniaturization in High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

One of the increasingly important trends in the field of separation science is the miniaturization of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) [ 1—3 ]. The miniaturization of chromatography was started by the introduction of open-tubular (capillary) columns for gas chromatography (GC) by Golay in the late 1950s. Decreasing the particle size in liquid chromatography (LC) has obviously been pursued since the very beginning of HPLC. Moreover, consistent efforts to decrease the column diameter can be traced to the mid-1970s. Our laboratories were among the first to realize the advantages of miniaturization in HPLC. Since the mide-1970s, numerous papers (more than 100) have been published concerning miniaturization in HPLC [ 4 ]. Microcolumn techniques offer the following advantages over conventional HPLC: Increased separation efficiency. The ability to use expensive mobile phases because of extremely low flow rates. Increased mass sensitivity with concentration-sensitive detectors. The possibility of novel detection modes.