Selection of the solid support - a crucial step for the realization of solvent generated liquid-liquid chromatography

Abstract Solvent-generated liquid-liquid chromatography (SGLLC) is a LLC technique in which the stationary liquid is generated dynamically by the mobile phase. This approach allows the advantages of liquid-liquid distribution as a retention mechanism to be used without the disadvantage of “column bleeding”. The selection of suitable “inert” solid supports for LLC based on the correlation between chromatographic retention and static liquid distribution data is described. The retention mechanism is verified and the magnitude of residual adsorption contributions to retention in the LLC mode is estimated. The similarity of the retention behaviour of columns operated in either the LLC or the liquid-solid chromatographic (LSC) mode was investigated by two classification methods: by comparing the correlation coefficients of capacity factors for pairs of columns and by cluster analysis. The results demonstrate that a number of solid supports show only insignificant adsorption effects in the LLC mode and that on these columns operated in the LLC mode retention data are more similar than on columns operated in the LSC mode.