While Marcel Golay's invention of capillary column in GC led to commercialization in the early 1960s, applications were initially confined to petroleum analysis. In the 1970s, there were only a handful of academic laboratories working on capillary GC. Glass capillaries, which extended considerably the scope of high-resolution GC, were also initially at the birth of important directions in chromatographic analysis: capillary liquid chromatography; capillary supercritical fluid chromatography; and capillary zone electrophoresis. Fabrication of fused silica tubing was essential in replacing glass capillaries, becoming a mainstream technology for chromatography and electrophoresis in life sciences. In combination with mass spectrometry, capillary separation methods provide the key approach to the fields of proteomics, glycomics and metabolomics. While the instrument industry has combined the ideas of their own with those from academia into some of the most sophisticated instruments, the university laboratories continue to generate additional ideas and train future leaders in separation science.

Evolution of capillary separations in America: Complementary contributions from industry and academia

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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