Developments in the use and fabrication of organic monolithic phases for use with high-performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrochromatography

Capillary electrochromatography suffered in its development because of difficulty in producing stable columns with good permeability. Variability in frit characteristics gave rise to non-reproducible capillaries whose fabrication was extremely difficult and time consuming. Monolithic stationary phases gained popularity in the early 1990s due to the fact that they were easy to fabricate and required no retaining frits. They were also able to be manufactured in a wide variety of chemistries which made them very interesting to the analytical chemist who is constantly looking for materials with different selectivity to the popular silica-based stationary phases.