Highly efficient capillary columns packed with superficially porous particles via sequential column packing

Highly efficient capillary columns packed with superficially porous particles were created for use in ultrahigh pressure liquid chromatography. Superficially porous particles around 1.5 μm in diameter were packed into fused silica capillary columns with 30, 50, and 75 μm internal diameters. To create the columns, several capillary columns were serially packed from the same slurry, with packing progress plots being generated to follow the packing of each column. Characterization of these columns using hydroquinone yielded calculated minimum reduced plate heights as low as 1.24 for the most efficient 30 μm internal diameter column, corresponding to over 500,000 plates/m. At least one highly efficient column (minimum reduced plate height less than 2) was created for all three of the investigated column inner diameters, with the smallest diameter columns having the highest efficiency. This study proves that highly efficient capillary columns can be created using superficially porous particles and shows the efficiency potential of these particles.