As regulators have redefined environmental methods for low-abundance analytes, and demanded the analysis of more analytes, column manufacturers have done well to provide greater sensitivity and selectivity.

As FTIR instrumentation has become more compact and reliable, it has experienced a type of commoditization. That does not mean that innovation has ceased.

All major vendors of ultra high-performance liquid chromatography systems (UHPLC) have overcome significant problems related to detection, speed, column life (although users still grumble), usability, interface, and the special circumstances of working at very high pressures. The next frontier in rapid chromatography is one every analytical scientist will recognize.

Whether its typical samples are liquids, solids, or gases, nearly every laboratory has an ultraviolet-visible spectrometer that serves as a workhorse for dozens of applications.

Things to consider when starting or running a cell culture laboratory

The most significant trend in modern lab furniture is the move away from fixed casework and lab benches toward modular benches, tables, and worktops.

Despite the “old tech” reputation of cold storage products, customer-driven innovation has been ongoing and steady. 

The market for high-temperature ovens, operating between around 400ºC and 600ºC, is heating up, says Scott Miller, marketing manager at Carbolite (Watertown, WI).

Environmental testing had been a sleepy marketplace until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began issuing strict regulations for air, soil, and water in the 1970s. Environmental law spawned thousands of large and small laboratories, many of which had been operating in nonenvironmental industries.

Defining consistency for lab operations

Detector, features drive option choices

In 1964, University of Utah chemistry professor J. Calvin Giddings enunciated a theoretical platform, “unified separation science,” that could confer the resolving power of GC to LC. Giddings’ model combined the higher mobile phase diffusion and efficiency of GC with LC’s higher selectivity via orthogonal separation modes. His vision has been made a reality through supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), which uses supercritical or subcritical carbon dioxide as the mobile phase.

“Fun new tools,” particularly in mass detection, have encouraged a new conversation among separation scientists, says Nicholas Hall, national sales director at LECO (St. Joseph, MI). “Every time this occurs, the instrument vendors engage in the equivalent of an arms race, where the battles are fought over specifications— more resolution, greater fragmentation capability.” But the real discussion has recently involved the very nature of chromatography, Hall says. “Just as important as the tool used for detection on the back end is the time and optimization that goes on at the front end.” Thus the resurgence of basic chromatography optimization, the application of solid analytical chemistry, and a focus on chromatography as the optimization of mass spectrometers. “If you have good separation and good sample preparation, and that goes into the MS, then you’re really optimizing the mass spectrometer’s capabilities.”

Our EXPERT: Kimberly Moser Instructional Laboratory Manager University of Oklahoma

LIMSs dominate, but convergence rules