High-Performance Liquid Chromatography
A technique in which a liquid mobile phase is pumped at high pressure through a column of very fine stationary phase.
Unit
min
In depth
Particle sizes of a few micrometres give very high efficiency but require pressures of hundreds of bar. Unlike GC, HPLC handles non-volatile, thermally fragile and high molar mass compounds, which makes it the dominant technique in pharmaceutical and biochemical analysis.
Examples in the real world
Assaying the active ingredient and impurities in a tablet; separating proteins and peptides.