Supercritical fluid chromatography‐mass spectrometry for chemical analysis

Abstract

Chromatography with a supercritical fluid as the mobile phase was suggested more than four decades ago (Klesper, E., Corwin, A. H., Turner, D. A., J. Org. Chem. 1962, 27, 700-701). Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is basically a hybrid of GC and LC that eases the resolution of a mixture of compounds not conveniently resolved by either GC or LC. The mobile phases for SFC have low viscosities and high diffusion coefficients compared to those for HPLC and allow for high efficiency separations. SFC uses supercritical fluid as the mobile phase, polar organic solvents as the modifiers in conjunction with acidic/basic compounds as additives to run the chromatographic process like in HPLC. In many applications, SFC-based methods are advantageous over HPLC-based methods as a separation tool in terms of efficiency and economical impact perspectives. Today, the availability of commercial hardware and API interfaces with a mass spectrometer makes SFC even more widely applicable for chemical analysis in many research fields. This review summarizes a variety of novel SFC-MS methods for chemical analysis that have been reported in the peer-reviewed publications.

Supercritical fluid chromatography for the enantioseparation of pharmaceuticals

“…The higher volatility of the mobile phase in SFC, makes it easy to interface SFC with MS. Carbon dioxide, used as main eluent in SFC, is inert and can therefore be heated and evaporated in a mass spectrometer ion chamber [106]. This makes SFC actually more appropriate than HPLC to couple with electrospray ionization (ESI), atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI) or atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) interfaces [107,108].…”

Supercritical fluid chromatography in pharmaceutical analysis

“…On one hand, SFC-MS coupling should be relatively easier to achieve compared to LC-MS due to availability of API ion sources and high proportion of volatile CO 2 contained in the mobile phase, which should enhance the evaporation step during the ionization process [102][103][104]. On the other hand, there is an obstacle induced by the possibility of the analytes precipitation due to SFC mobile phase decompression.…”

Supercritical Fluid Chromatography

“…Useful information for a variety of SFC -MS interfaces has been established. Consequently, it has been widely used for chemical and bioanlytical analysis and purifi cation of diverse types of molecules from small drugs to polymers, polypeptides, and proteins in different sample matrices (Combs et al, 1997 ;Bola ñ os et al, 2004 ;Li and Hsieh, 2008 ). Atmospheric pressure ionization ( API ) sources, both electrospray and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization ( APCI ), have been used in SFC -MS. APCI is the most popular ionization in SFC due to its high -fl ow compatibility.…”