ABSTRACT
I. THE EARLY DAYS I can imagine that the title of this chapter could be somewhat confusing for some readers. Nearly all chromatographers are aware of the ongoing efforts to employ microchips in separation science, but only the older chromatographers will remember the days when crushed bricks were used as a support material for gas chromatography (GC) stationary phases. Indeed, this was how it also started for me in the early 1960s at the Dutch State Mines (DSM) in the Netherlands, where I worked one semester in the frame of my chemical engineering studies. Fire brick was crushed and sieved to yield a narrow size fraction of particles, typically 60-80 mesh, which were impregnated with 10% or more of stationary phases like stopcock grease (Apiezon grease), squalane, or other high boiling products from the petroleum industry. The impregnated material was packed into U-shaped glass tubes, which were mounted in the standard workhorse, the legendary Fractovap Gas Chromatograph from Perkin Elmer, equipped with a hot wire detector. The results that I obtained with this setup made an incredible impression on me. Earlier I had carried out some fractionation work on petroleum distillates with Podbielniak precision distillation equipment, one of the best laboratory stills available at that time. I was very proud of the outcome of that work. However, results from the gas chromatograph were so much better and were obtained in such a short time. I had to run the samples over and over again to believe it, and I could not get enough of looking at the movement of the recorder pen! It became the start of a lifetime devotion to separation science.
