ABSTRACT

Microbore column chromatography offers high-resolution separation methodology within the scope of capillary gas chromatography (GC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), and micro-high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Current column technology and detector advances will undoubtedly make microbore column chromatography a unified approach for the generation of total chromatographic information for an unknown sample. Since the growth of microbore column chromatography depends upon the development of small-diameter columns, future trends in open-tubular column technology are likely to follow the development of small-diameter columns for high-speed and high-resolution capillary GC, capillary SFC, and open-tubular column HPLC. Recently, capillary SFC technique has been successfully applied in the separation of polar lipids of archaebacteria. The developments in tubular columns and capillary-packed column technologies have benefited all fronts in microbore column chromatography. The trend in miniaturization of the chromatographs, especially in the reduction of the detector cell volumes and response times strongly implies that future chromatography will be performed using same injector, column, detector, pump, and oven systems.