LCGC Europe-08-01-2015

Ionic liquids (ILs) have become recognized in gas chromatography (GC) as stable and highly polar stationary phases with a wide application range. Having customizable molecular structures, ILs also offer a particular tunability that provides additional selectivity, and therefore may improve separation for neighbouring analytes. This article presents specific properties of IL phase capillary GC columns, including polarity scale and inner surface morphologies of IL columns. Application of IL phases in achiral and chiral GC, and multidimensional GC, are highlighted.

How to distinguish between liquid chromatography (LC) column overload and detector overload.

There has been a revival of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) in recent years, especially in the chiral preparative field, but also more recently in the analytical area. However, SFC is considerably more complex than liquid chromatography (LC), mainly because of the compressibility of the mobile phase. One can say that SFC is a “rubber variant” of LC where everything considered constant in LC varies in SFC. In this review, we go through advances in theory, instrumentation, and novel applications.

Recently, Nature and Science Citation Index listed the 100 most cited research papers of all time. Two of these are the classic Bligh-Dyer and Folch lipid extraction methods from the late 1950s. This month we take a look at the lasting impact of these publications and explore the current state of lipid extractions, including lipidomics.

The PEFTEC International Conference and Exhibition for Petroleum, Refining, and Environmental Analysis will be held on 18–19 November 2015 at the Antwerp Exhibition Centre, Antwerp, Belgium

This instalment provides an overview of high-throughput characterization techniques of drug leads to support small-molecule drug discovery programmes in a pharmaceutical company. Myriad analytical chemistry techniques including separation science methodologies are used to confirm the structures and identities, quantitating the concentrations of stock solutions, and measuring key physicochemical properties of the new chemical entities (NCE). A case study is used here to illustrate the details of these applications in high-throughput characterization.

Click the title above to open the LCGC Europe August 2015 regular issue, Vol 28, No 8, in an interactive PDF format.