Gas chromatography

The balance between fundamental discovery in GC and the availability of technology to make explorations is a dynamic balance, and the entire field of GC has exhibited changing relationships in these features this past review cycle. Some of the trends that are noteworthy include the introduction of new stationary phases and the use of chemometric methods to explore structure-retention relationships in columns. Such studies have always required a high level of specialization although software and computation power are now generally available to renovate and expand this line of inquiry. Multidimensional GC technology is now sufficiently stable and available so that basic questions on the relationships between chromatographic performance and methodology are now being addressed, once again using chemometric methods. The limits of high-speed GC are being opened for discussion and discovery with new technologies. While GC has been seen in the recent past reviews as stable and mature in fundamental, some of the keys to a fully described method are not available generally, for example, a priori prediction of retention times. Apart from specialized studies, molecular structure-retention tools remain isolated to several research teams and there is no user-friendly capability. There is a sense from this survey that the field of GC is on the verge of some significant advances where fundamentals will either be at the center of or will arise in parallel to innovation. Certainly, there has been a freshness with research studies described during the past two years to anticipate such developments. © 2006 American Chemical Society.