Since the introduction of high-performance liquid chromatography in the 1960s, stainless steel has been commonly used for the flow path within instrumentation due to its hardwearing nature and relatively low reactivity with many common solvents. However, certain analytes are able to chelate to free iron on the surface of stainless steel (SS), leading to carryover, poor peak shapes, and reduced detection sensitivity. There have been a number of commercialized solutions aiming to resolve this problem from temporary surface passivation using acids to replacing SS components with PEEK or titanium.
In this work, we present novel inert-coated HPLC column hardware and demonstrate a reduction in chelation and nonspecific interactions via comparison against standard SS columns of the same stationary phases. Testing was carried out against commonly known chelating mycotoxin and organophosphorus pesticides, demonstrating improved peak response and shape and a reduction in the requirement for conditioning injections.
