Practical evaluation of sol-gel and hydrothermal fritting technologies for rapid column fabrication and its application in capillary electrochromatography and micro-liquid chromatography

Tetroethoxysilane (TEOS) sol-gel technology was investigated as an alternative fritting methodology. It allowed a wide range of silica based stationary phase materials of differing particle sizes (3-12 mum) in capillaries of differing lengths (7.4-25 cm) and internal diameters (100375 pm) to be investigated. Experiments comparing coupled with continuous capillaries illustrated a loss of approximately 7% in chromatographic peak efficiency for the coupled capillary format. Continuous column architecture experiments showed that it is possible to detect through the packed bed without losing the peak efficiency when optimised detector settings were employed. TEOS fritting technology was fast and reliable, allowing rapid stationary phase screening for CEC or micro-LC.