Definition for High Performance Liquid Chromatography
From Biology Forums Dictionary
High performance liquid chromatography is a powerful tool in analysis. This page looks at how it is carried out and shows how it uses the same principles as in thin layer chromatography and column chromatography.
Introduction
High performance liquid chromatography is basically a highly improved form of column chromatography. Instead of a solvent being allowed to drip through a column under gravity, it is forced through under high pressures of up to 400 atmospheres. That makes it much faster.
It also allows you to use a very much smaller particle size for the column packing material which gives a much greater surface area for interactions between the stationary phase and the molecules flowing past it. This allows a much better separation of the components of the mixture.
The other major improvement over column chromatography concerns the detection methods which can be used. These methods are highly automated and extremely sensitive.
