High Performance Liquid Chromatography

High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a technique in analytical chemistry used to separate, identify, and quantify various components of interest in a sample. This separation is accomplished through the instrument pumps moving pressurized liquid, what is referred to as the eluent, buffer, or liquid mobile phase, containing the sample liquid through a column packed with a solid adsorbent material. Next the separated components of the sample pass through the detectors which provide a chromatogram containing peaks unique to the sample components.

HPLC is a term that encompasses multiple types of chromatography that are differentiated from one another based on the property/characteristic used to separate the sample of interest. Within SciTech, we perform reverse-phase chromatography, ion chromatography (IC), and size-exclusion/gel permeation chromatography (SEC/GPC).

HPLC

(Reverse Phase)

stacks of white boxes with dark grey windows and bottles on top

HPIC

stack of white boxes with dark grey windows next to a computer

GPC/SEC

boxy grey instrument with brown glass bottles on top