Measurement and Modeling of Extra-Column Effects Due to Injection and Connections in Capillary Liquid Chromatography

As column volumes continue to decrease, extra-column band broadening has become an increasingly important consideration when determining column performance. Combined contributions due to the injector and connecting tubing in a capillary LC system were measured and found to be larger than expected by Taylor-Aris theory. Variance from sigma-type and tau-type broadening was isolated from eluted peaks using the Foley-Dorsey Exponentially Modified Gaussian peak fitting model and confirmed with computational fluid dynamics. It was found that the tau-type contributions were the main cause for the excessive broadening because of poorly-swept volumes at the connection between the injector and tubing. To reduce tau-type contributions (and peak tailing), a timed pinch mode could be used for analyte injection.