ABSTRACT
Developments in packed column supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s to the present. Significant new growth in research and application of capillary SFC occurred following its introduction. Capillary SFC is capable of eluting a surprising variety of solutes, including many with polar functional groups. From the limited number of applications of SFC to polar solutes published to date, the key to elution, at least with CO2 mobile phase, seems to be in avoiding solute ionization. Supercritical fluid chromatography, especially when used with open-tubular columns, has the potential for solving a major fraction of industrial analytical separation problems currently going unsolved. The practical, problem-solving, and cost-effective strength of capillary SFC lines in its combination of a relatively high-efficiency separation using a low-temperature solvating mobile phase of programmable elution strength and its compatibility with a universal detector for organic compounds—the flame ionization detector.
