ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to be a practical overview of the liquid chromatography sorbents, instrumentation, and the various method development approaches used in pharmaceutical laboratories for both relatively small molecules and biomolecules. It discuses sorbents that are used to resolve enantiomers and biomolecules. The first modern liquid chromatography utilized sulfonated poly(styrene-divinylbenzene) polymeric ion-exchange packing. These polymers have also been derivatized on C18 to give a sorbent which is chemically stable over a broad pH range and has characteristics similar to C18. Liquid chromatography instrumentation is continuously being refined and improved. Advances in electronics are incorporated into pumps, system injectors, data handling, and detectors. Several detectors employ measurement of electrochemical property to monitor liquid chromatographic effluent. The two most commonly used are conductivity and amperometric detectors. Polarimetry coupled to a liquid chromatograph has been used to determine the optical purity of drugs. The advantages of this approach for determining optical purity are that the enantiomers do not need to be resolved.
