Significance of Sol-gel Materials in Chromatographic Separation and Analytical/Bioanalytical Sample Preparation

Recent decades have witnessed a phenomenal improvement in chromatographic instruments in terms of sensitivity, miniaturization, data acquisition and processing, and ruggedness. As a consequence, the demand for advanced materials as the chromatographic stationary phases and sorbents for extraction and microextraction techniques possessing improved selectivity, extended thermal, chemical and solvent stability, and expanded lifetime have been skyrocketed. Sol-gel technology, an economical, convenient and green synthesis pathway to chemically combine organic ligands into inorganic polymeric networks, have emerged in recent years as a continuous source of advanced materials characterized with tunable selectivity, higher porosity, superior thermal, chemical and solvent stability with controllable final configuration as a film on a substrate surface or as sorbent particles. Sol-gel technology has offered a large number of advanced material systems including gas chromatographic stationary phases, liquid chromatographic stationary phases, sorbents for solid phase extraction and solid phase microextraction, sorbents for waste water treatment, sorbents for edible water filtration unit, to name a few. In the current talk, some new and fascinating data on novel high performance liquid chromatographic stationary phases, solid phase extraction sorbents, and solid-phase microextraction sorbents will be presented. In addition, the design, construction and applications of a number of new sample preparation techniques based on sol-gel technology including fabric phase sorptive extraction (FPSE), capsule phase microextraction (CPME) and in-vial microextraction (IVME) will also be presented.