HPLC - High Performance Liquid Chromatography
What Is HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography)?
Brief History and Definition
Liquid chromatography was defined in the early 1900s by the work of the Russian botanist, Mikhail S. Tswett. His pioneering studies focused on separating compounds [leaf pigments], extracted from plants using a solvent, in a column packed with particles.
Tswett filled an open glass column with particles. Two specific materials that he found useful were powdered chalk [calcium carbonate] and alumina. He poured his sample [solvent extract of homogenized plant leaves] into the column and allowed it to pass into the particle bed. This was followed by pure solvent. As the sample passed down through the column by gravity, different colored bands could be seen separating because some components were moving faster than others. He related these separated, different-colored bands to the different compounds that were originally contained in the sample. He had created an analytical separation of these compounds based on the differing strength of each compound’s chemical attraction to the particles. The compounds that were more strongly attracted to the particles slowed down, while other compounds more strongly attracted to the solvent moved faster. This process can be described as follows: the compounds contained in the sample distribute, or partition differently between the moving solvent, called the mobile phase, and the particles, called the stationary phase. This causes each compound to move at a different speed, thus creating a separation of the compounds.
Tswett coined the name chromatography [from the Greek words chroma, meaning color, and graph, meaning writing—literally, color writing] to describe his colorful experiment. [Curiously, the Russian name Tswett means color.] Today, liquid chromatography, in its various forms, has become one of the most powerful tools in analytical chemistry.