Abstract

HPLC COLUMNS AND THEIR ROLE IN ANALYTICAL METHOD DEVELOPMENT: A REVIEW

Pandey Priyambada* and Goyal Anju

Abstract

The term chromatography comes from greek words “chroma” which means “colour” and “graphein” which means “to write”. Chromatography is a technique that separates, identifies and quantitates the constituents in a mixture. HPLC technique came into existence in late 1960s as a better version of column chromatography from the knowledge of the theoretical plates. HPLC follows the principle of adsorption of solute on stationary phase based on its affinity towards stationary phase for separation of constituents of mixture. Columns are important component usually made of heavy glass or stainless steel tubing to withstand pressure in HPLC system. Columns are usually long narrow tubes containing stationery phase at particle diameters of 25μm or less. Silica gel is the first choice for packing the analytical columns because it is an inert substance thus it does not react with mobile phase and offers particle size and porosity that is optimum for separation of the components. With the changing time there are numerous advancements made regarding dimension and column packing for faster separation. Today’s columns are as small as a human finger especially those used in UPLC technique. The present paper is meant to focus on heart of HPLC i.e. Columns and discuss the recent innovations made in this field.

Keywords: HPLC, Columns, Chromatography, Silica gel, Innovations, Stationary phase, mobile phase etc.