ABSTRACT
During the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s a considerable number of sensing methods were examined with a view to their being developed into an Liquid Chromatography (LC) detector. The specifications of an LC detector are broadly the same as those for a GC detector, although the individual values vary significantly between the two types, sometimes over many orders of magnitude. The UV detectors are predominantly ‘solute property detectors’ but as already discussed if the solvent used for the mobile phase contains a UV chromaphore then there will be a background signal from the mobile phase. The light source is usually a discharge lamp, such as a low pressure mercury vapor lamp and the light is focused through two adsorption cells onto two photoelectric sensors. The UV lamp that provides the excitation radiation is often a low pressure mercury lamp as it is comparatively inexpensive and provides relatively high intensity UV light at 253.7 nm.
