Monolithic Silica for Fast HPLC: Current Success and Promising Future

Abstract

As an approach for fast HPLC, monolithic silica has proven to be highly effective. It is especially successful for routinely obtaining fast isocratic HPLC analyses of small drug molecules. The low cost of monolithic compared with other approaches, such as UPLC, makes it more convenient for everyday application. It is also the more developed and widely applied technique compared with superficially porous particles. It offers the possibility for gaining high plate numbers through column coupling, but not at the expense of run time if a proper flow program is subsequently applied. Good precision and batch reproducibility are now achieved with commercially available monolithic silica columns. The application of monolithic silica columns is already well developed in various fields. It invades the field of bio-analysis and proteomics. Hundreds of analytical methods have already been successfully transferred to or developed on monolithic silica columns. An updated strategy based on Snyder's method for rapid method development using monolithic column has been provided. However, more is still to be expected from monolithic silica in term of chemistry variation, application, and instrument compatibility. The future of monolithic silica is promising when considering the high demand for fast chromatographic analysis.

Fast Analysis of Bioactive Compounds by Reverse Phase Liquid Chromatography

“…More recently, partially porous particles were developed and due to the reduced diffusion path for analytes, they are expected to have superior mass transfer properties compared with fully porous particles and therefore provide similar separation efficiencies compared to sub-2 μm totally porous particles but at much lower pressures (11). In this case, partially porous particles can be used in both conventional HPLC and UHPLC systems.…”

“…Several strategies have been used to increase the speed of LC separations, including shorter columns with new stationary phases and exploring method conditions (temperature, solvent and flow rate) to reduce analysis time ( Figure 1). Currently, columns packed with sub-2 μm particles in ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) systems, columns packed with partially porous particles and monolithic columns are the three main competing approaches for fast liquid chromatography (11,12). Other strategies include the use of short columns with reduced internal diameter and optimization of the method conditions to improve separation and allow higher flow rates/ linear velocity of the mobile phase.…”

Challenges and Advances in the Fabrication of Monolithic Bioseparation Materials and their Applications in Proteomics Research

“…In comparison to columns based on silica particles, a silica monolithic column is a highly permeable stationary phase. The greater surface area and higher physical strength of silica monoliths are remarkable advantages in comparison with polymeric monoliths . So silica‐based monolithic stationary phases are more suitable for separation of small molecules corresponding to a common particle‐packed column (3–5 µm diameter) .…”

Green Foodomics

“…Although an interesting application has been suggested for this type of columns in plant metabolomics (Tolstikov et al, 2003), its main use is in the field of proteomics, in which more than 170 documents have been found concerning the use of such columns for human proteome analysis ( Van de Meent and De Jong, 2011;El Deeb, 2011;Iwasaki et al, 2012). The use of monolithic columns provides an important reduction in terms of solvent consumption since faster separations (by a factor of 4) are obtained as compared to conventional LC columns.…”