Technology of multidimensional gas chromatography (MDGC) and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC)

The term ‘dimension’ in the above titles refers to the use of a ‘dimension of chromatography’ – or put more simply, a column – or for multidimension – two or more columns. In the broad sense, a ‘dimension of analysis’ is any technique that provides independent analysis capability. So FTIR, MS, and GC are discrete dimensions; they can be operated independently to provide some measure of analysis / identification. Provided the individual dimensions are compatible and can be ‘hyphenated’, we can construct twoor multiple-dimensional systems, such as GC-MS. The only benefit in doing this is to provide the analyst with more information than is possible from either of the separate dimensions.