Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has been recog n i zed as a powerful sep a ration technique supplementing gas (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC). Although capillary SFC has a high resolving power, the efficiency of a single capillary column is still inadequate for the separation of closely related compounds and complex mixtures such as isomeric compounds and environmental and biological samples. Multi-dimensional chromatography is an excellent technique for obtaining increased resolving power. Although various forms of multi-dimensional (mostly twodimensional) chromatography using GC, LC and SFC have been rep o rted and some of them are well established as reviewed [1,2], a limited number of reports have been published with respect to capillary SFC-SFC [3,4].In this study, we developed a simple flow switching interface for two-dimensional capillary SFC. A novel plumbing method to construct the system was also developed. The primary column was a non-polar methyl polysiloxane column and the secondary column a polar polyethylene glycol column. This geometry was more effective for controlling the resolutions on the secondary column than the reversed one. Pressure and temperature affected the selectivity on the secondary column as in single column SFC.
Experimental
ChemicalsA mixture of para ffins (C 1 8 -C 2 6 ) , fatty acid methyl esters (C 16 Me-C 22 Me) and alcohols (C 12 OH-C 18 OH) (Tokyo Kasei, Tokyo, Japan) with even carbon atoms was used for fundamental study on two-dimensional SFC as a test sample. C h o l e s t e rol (chol) and its fatty acid derivat ive s , l a u rat e ( ch o l -1 2 : 0 ) , my ri s t ate (ch o l -1 4 : 0 ) , p a l m i t ate (ch o l -1 6 : 0 ) , palmitoleate (chol-16:1), stearate (chol-18:0), oleate (chol-1 8 : 1 ) , l i n o l e ate (ch o l -1 8 : 2 ) , l i n o l e n ate (chol-18:3) and a ra ch i d o n ate (ch o l -2 0 : 4 ) , we re purchased from Sigma ( S t . L o u i s , M O, USA). Oligo m e ric sample with two b ra n ches of polyox ye t hylene (2,4,7,9-tetra m e t hy l -4 , 7 -bis(polyoxyethylene)-5-decyne) was obtained from Hayashi Kasei (Nagoya, Japan). All these samples were dissolved in dichloromethane. Ultra high purity carbon dioxide (ShowaTansan, Yokkaichi, Japan) was used as mobile phase.
InstrumentsThe pump was an LC-6A liquid ch ro m at ograph pump ( S h i m a d z u , Kyo t o , Japan) equipped with a pump head cooler (MC-28T, Netsudenshi Kogyo, Tokyo, Japan) and a home-made pre s s u re progra m m e r. The superc ritical fl u i d ch ro m at ograph was a HP 5840A gas ch ro m at ograp h (Hewlett-Packard, Avondale, Penn., USA) with dual flame ionization detectors (FID). The FID temperature was held at 300 or 350 o C. Capillary columns were HP-1 (100 µm i.d. × 10 m, 0.40 µm film thickness) and HP-WAX (100 µm i.d. × 10 m, 0.20 µm film thickness). In most cases, the former was used as a primary column and the latter as a secondary column in two-dimensional SFC. The column temperature was between 80 and 120 o C. Samples were injected with a Rheodyne 7520 injector (Cotati, C...