In Pursuit of the Ideal HPLC Column: Improving Reproducibility, Stability, Efficiency, and Inertness

Join us for our 3-Part series to Meet our Experts and discuss topics including:

• History of HPLC column technology over the last 50 years and how advancements have helped address current separation challenges.

• Fundamentals of small molecule separations to enable you to develop methods more efficiently.

• Solvent and column choices with UPLC to develop more environmentally friendly chromatography methods

PART 1: In Pursuit of the Ideal HPLC Column: Improving Reproducibility, Stability, Efficiency, and Inertness

The ideal HPLC column is highly reproducible, stable when exposed to a wide range of mobile phases and temperatures, and able to produce narrow and symmetrical peaks for all analytes of interest. Since the development of the first commercially available HPLC columns 50 years ago, the technologies used to synthesize stationary phases, to fabricate column hardware and to pack columns have steadily improved to allow us to come closer to reaching these ideals.

This presentation will highlight several of the key improvements made over the last 30 years, including high purity stationary phases, hybrid organic/inorganic particles, UHPLC columns and hybrid surface technology hardware. The importance of these advancements for addressing some current separation challenges will be demonstrated.

Presenter: Tom Walter (Corporate Fellow, Consumables and Lab Automation, Waters Corporation)

Thomas Walter received a Ph. D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working on multinuclear solid-state NMR spectroscopy of heterogeneous catalysts. Joining the Chemistry R&D group of Waters in 1987, he held positions of increasing responsibility, including serving as the Director of Chemistry R&D from 2000 – 2015. He is a coinventor of hybrid organic/inorganic particle technology with 15 issued US patents. He has authored 43 publications on chromatographic materials, columns, and NMR spectroscopy. He is currently a Corporate Fellow in the Consumables and Lab Automation Division. He is a member of the Jim Waters Society and the 2023 recipient of the Uwe Neue award.