ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the practical aspects of capillary Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) with emphasis on mobile phases, column technology, instrumentation, and operating conditions. Ammonia has great potential as a polar mobile phase, but work still must be done to develop instrumentation and column materials that are resistant to this fluid. Knowledge about column materials, dimensions, stationary phases, and methods for column preparation is important for using and treating such columns properly and for optimizing the performance of supercritical fluid chromatographic systems. Recently, several complete SFC systems have been introduced by instrument companies and are now commercially available. One of the limitations of cooled injection systems is that the components that are introduced onto the column must be soluble in the liquid solvent carrier. One of the major advantages of capillary SFC is that both liquid chromatography and gas chromatography detectors are readily adapted for use as SFC detection systems.
