Performance of the Agilent 1290 Infinity Quaternary Pump using Trifluoroacetic Acid (TFA) as the mobile phase modifier

In liquid chromatography, baseline noise should be as low as possible to provide an optimum signal-to-noise ratio and to enable reliable integration of peaks at trace level. Baseline noise has different sources. One source is the detector, and another is the mixing performance of the pump, which is especially important if, for example, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is used as modifier in the mobile phase. This Technical Overview shows the mixing performance of the Agilent 1290 Quaternary Pump using TFA as the modifier in the mobile phase. Mixing performance depends strongly on the mixing volume. Typically, larger mixing volumes are better for higher baseline performance. Therefore, the influence of an additional mixer (V380 Jet Weaver) on the baseline noise of the 1290 Infinity Quaternary Pump is evaluated. The results obtained using the Agilent 1260 Infinity Quaternary Pump are compared with results obtained using a non-Agilent quaternary UHPLC system. Author A.G.Huesgen Agilent Technologies, Inc. Waldbronn, Germany 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 With mixer w/o mixer Pe ak -t ope ak n oi se (m A U ) Comparison of baseline noise 0% ACN 1% ACN 3% ACN 5% ACN 10% ACN 15% ACN 20% ACN 30% ACN 50% ACN 80% ACN 100% ACN