The Column - June 2009 - 8

Market Profile: UHPLC The market for high performance liquid chromatography continues to be one of the most dynamic markets of the analytical instruments industry. Innovations in mass spectrometry helped to fuel growth for the HPLC market. But, in many cases, HPLC was somewhat of an afterthought and considered to be a mere Experience inlet to MS. The introduction and development of ultra high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) systems is forcing a change in the liquid chromatography market as users re-evaluate existing solutions and explore new applications. Most of the major HPLC vendors now offer UHPLC systems capable of withstanding backpressures from using with UHPLC sub-2 or sub-3 micron particle columns. Power use Interest and 6% use of UHPLC systems has certainly increased at a fast pace because of several obvious beneﬁts such as throughput, sensitivity and resolution. While the pharmaceutical industry has been the early adopter of UHPLC technology, other industrial segments are also outﬁtting their labs with UHPLC systems. The beneﬁts are being discovered by HPLC users and have consequently expanded the market into the mainstream. In a recent survey of liquid chromatography users, participants were asked about their experience with UHPLC. More than half of the respondents were currently using UHPLC technology. An additional nine percent have at least evaluated a system. Approximately 16% of the respondents indicated that they were well-informed about UHPLC technology, while nearly a ﬁfth of the respondents indicated that they have no experience. Nearly all users with experience with UHPLC generally have a favourable opinion towards UPHLC and indicated that perhaps up to two-thirds of their applications could be converted to UHPLC technology. Speed of analysis and low solvent usage tends to be the most compelling reasons to convert to HPLC methods to UHPLC. These beneﬁts also positively affect a lab’s productivity, throughput and methods development. Because the runtimes are signiﬁcantly shorter, users can reduce the optimization process of their methods simply because they can string more runs in a particular day. The soaring cost of solvents such as acetonitrile (ACN) is forcing users to evaluate methods and consider more efﬁcient technologies. The foregoing data was extracted and adapted from SDi’s recently published report, Liquid Chromatography: User Requirements Forcing Change. For more information, contact Glenn Cudiamat, vice president of Research Services, Strategic Directions International Inc., 6242 Westchester Parkway, Suite 100, Los Angeles, California 90045, USA, tel. +1 310 641 4982, fax +1 310 641 8851, e-mail: cudiamat@strategic-directions.com No experience 19% Current user 50% Informed 16% Evaluated 9% Contact author: Glenn Cudiamat E-mail: cudiamat@strategic-directions.com 8 1 9 Contents Tips & Tricks 2 13 Vosloo Rainville and Mather 6 17 News Meeting Review 8 20 Market Trends & Analysis Events & Contacts

The Column - June 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Column - June 2009