Characteristics and application scope of supercritical fluid chromatography

Chromatographic techniques that use supercritical fluids as the active phase are called supercritical fluid chromatography. Although supercritical fluid chromatography appeared in the 1960s, it was not successfully used until the 21st century. At present, supercritical fluid chromatography is still a relatively new chromatographic analysis method, and many people do not know much about it. Here is a brief introduction to its characteristics and scope of application.

Comparison of supercritical fluid chromatography, gas chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography

SFC supercritical fluid chromatography columns are mainly used to analyze a variety of soluble compounds; the separation principle is that CO2 is used as the mobile phase to adjust the separation by changing the column, pressure and temperature, and adding organic cosolvents; no derivatization is required when analyzing volatile compounds. change.

Gas chromatography is mainly used to analyze volatile and difficult-to-degrade compounds; its separation principle is to adjust the separation by changing the chromatographic column and temperature; the sample needs to be vaporized to separate, and sometimes derivatization is required.

High performance liquid chromatography is mainly used to analyze a variety of soluble compounds that are easily degraded by heating; its separation principle is to adjust the separation by changing the chromatographic column, mobile phase and temperature; derivatization is sometimes required.

Supercritical fluid chromatography, gas chromatography, and high-performance liquid chromatography have different selectivities and can complement gas chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography very well. For complex system samples, supercritical fluid chromatography combined with other chromatographic separation methods can analyze the sample more completely.

Supercritical fluid chromatography is generally a normal-phase technique because components progress from low to high polarity. However, supercritical fluid chromatography has obvious advantages over normal-phase HPLC. Its equilibrium speed is extremely fast, its reproducibility is very good, and it can even analyze aqueous samples.

The scope of application of supercritical fluid chromatography

Supercritical fluid chromatography is well suited for the separation of very polar compounds, such as many natural products. Includes fat, fat-soluble drug impurities, carotenoids and lipids. For such samples, C18 is often used as the stationary phase. It can basically completely replace normal phase chromatography in the separation of fat-soluble compounds and achieve better separation results. Most early applications used pure CO2, pressure programs and flame ionization detectors (FID).

Supercritical fluid chromatography is a good choice for separating various structural analogs, such as various chiral drug isomers (including chiral drug impurities), azimuthal isomers, cis-trans isomers, etc.

Supercritical fluid chromatography can analyze volatile compounds, especially thermally unstable volatile compounds. Derivatization is not required when analyzing volatile compounds, and it can be expanded from analysis to preparation of SFC, breaking the bottleneck that GC cannot prepare.

SFC supercritical fluid chromatography has also been widely used in research on drug metabolites and analysis of traditional Chinese medicines.

Chisa (Shanghai) Industrial Co., Ltd. was established in 2016. It is mainly engaged in the development and manufacturing of chromatography filling systems and preparative chromatography column hardware. It also provides corresponding chromatography separation technical services and consultation.