In this special issue, a supplement to both LCGC North America and LCGC Europe, we have man- aged to assemble experts from the top IC research and development laboratories from across the world
to provide state-of-the art reviews surrounding elements of this well established separation technique. Hamish Small, now a consultant, gives a fascinating historical prospective, from the development of IC
at Dow through its commercialization, and explains why and how certain improvements were made along the way. In encountering difficult matrices, sample preparation is equally important in IC as it is in HPLC. Rosanne Slingsby and coworkers from Thermo Scientific (formerly Dionex) provide some practi- cal advice on sample preparation for IC. Chris Pohl, also of Thermo Scientific, who has contributed to many of the advances in the technology, especially from the commercial side, brings us up to date on the most widely used columns in modern IC. Chuck Lucy and Farooq Wahab from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, have been instrumental in advancing high-speed and high-resolution IC and provide examples on the use of shorter, smaller particle columns. Sandy Dasgupta and students from the University of Texas in Arlington discuss the most widely used detectors — the conductivity detector and the charge detector — the latter developed in their own laboratory. Finally, Paul Haddad and his group from the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, discuss their development of simulation software tools for the method development and optimization of separations in IC.
United States
