The History Of Ion Chromatography

Ion Chromatography is one of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and is a liquid chromatography method for the analysis of anions and cations.

In a narrow sense, ion chromatography is a chromatographic method in which a low exchange capacity ion exchange resin is used as a fixed relative ionic substance for separation and a conductivity detector is used to continuously detect changes in effluent conductance. Ion Chromatography is defined in the Principles and Applications of Ion Chromatography: Liquid Chromatography for Separation and Detection of Ionicity of a Substance.

Development history

In 1975, Small et al. successfully solved the problem of continuously detecting column effluent with a conductivity detector, that is, using an anion or cation exchange column with low exchange capacity, separating the inorganic ions with a strong electrolyte as the mobile phase, and the effluent passed through a scale. To inhibit the column of the ion exchange resin that is oppositely charged to the separation column packing. In this way, the counter ions of the ions to be measured in the mobile phase are removed, and the background phase conductance of the mobile phase is lowered, thereby obtaining high detection sensitivity. Since then, with the true ion chromatography (IC), IC has also been isolated from liquid chromatography as a chromatographic separation technique.

In 1979, Gjerde et al. used a weak electrolyte as the mobile phase. Since the mobile phase itself has a low conductivity, it can be directly detected by a conductivity detector without using a suppression column. Ion chromatography using a suppression column is called double column IC or suppress ed IC, and ion chromatography without a suppression column is called single column ion chromatography ( single column IC) or nonsuppressed IC (nonsuppressed IC).