Development of dedicated instrumentation to capillary liquid chromatography (cLC)

Author(s)

Lincoln Figueira Marins Coutinho

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Química de São Carlos (IQSC/BT)
• Defense date: 2008-09-05

Examining board members

Fernando Mauro Lanças; Fabio Augusto; João Batista Fernandes; Boaventura Freire dos Reis; José Carlos Rodrigues Silva

• Advisor: Fernando Mauro Lanças

Abstract

Since the chromatography was introduced by Tswett, in the beginning of the 20th century, the technique has suffered a constant progress. However, the miniaturization of liquid chromatography, instead of its promising start, it is still too slow and this technique has not reached a wide divulgation so far. It is important to mention that the number of groups working in this area is very limited yet. The reason of this slow progress was due to the difficulty in developing suitable equipments, appropriated columns and data treatment systems that are quick enough for the miniaturized systems. Currently, many of these problems are easy to be solved, however, there are no equipments available commercially that supply the conditions imposed by microcolumns satisfactorily. Such lack should be filled before benefiting from all the advantages concerned to the miniaturization of liquid chromatography. In this way, this study aims at the development of instrumentation totally dedicated to the miniaturized systems of liquid chromatography, including the development of a high pressure pump, an time-based injector, an oven that sets the temperature programming and the software that can control all these devices. The developed equipments were then applied in the separation of statins, demonstrating an excellent performance. (AU)