FUSED-SILICA PACKED CAPILLARY COLUMNS IN SUPERCRITICAL-FLUID CHROMATOGRAPHY

Packed capillary columns provide advantages of low flow rates, moderat e sample capacities and loadabilities, short analysis times, high dete ctabilities, and the possibility of using a wide variety of commercial ly available stationary phases. This type of column is finding increas ingly more applications in a variety of fields. In this paper, we repo rt detailed studies using relatively long (0.5 to 10 m) packed capilla ry columns in SFC. Characteristics such as packing density and column stability are reported, as well as efficiency, resolution, and pressur e drop for the different columns. It was found that densely packed cap illary columns prepared using supercritical CO2 as the slurry fluid ar e more stable and generally have better performance than conventional solvent slurry packed columns.