Implementing stationary-phase optimized selectivity in supercritical fluid chromatography

The performance of stationary-phase optimized selectivity liquid chromatography (SOS-LC) for improved separation of complex mixtures has been demonstrated before. A dedicated kit containing column segments of different lengths and packed with different stationary phases is commercially available together with algorithms capable of predicting and ranking isocratic and gradient separations over vast amounts of possible column combinations. Implementation in chromatographic separations involving compressible fluids, as is the case in supercritical fluid chromatography, had thus far not been attempted. The challenge of this approach is the dependency of solute retention with the mobile-phase density, complicating linear extrapolation of retention over longer or shorter columns segments, as is the case in conventional SOS-LC. In this study, the possibilities of performing stationary-phase optimized selectivity supercritical fluid chromatography (SOS-SFC) are demonstrated with typical low density mobile phases (94% CO2). The procedure is optimized with the commercially available column kit and with the classical isocratic SOS-LC algorithm. SOS-SFC appears possible without any density correction, although optimal correspondence between prediction and experiment is obtained when isopycnic conditions are maintained. As also the influence of the segment order appears significantly less relevant than expected, the use of the approach in SFC appears as promising as is the case in HPLC. Next to the classical use of SOS for faster baseline separation of all solutes in a mixture, the benefits of the approach for predicting as wide as possible separation windows around to-be-purified solutes in semi-preparative SFC are illustrated, leading to significant production rate improvements in (semi-) preparative SFC