Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography (HILIC) is the most successful approach for the retention and separation of polar compounds. HILIC has seen a substantial increase in popularity over the last decade, driven by the
increase in the development of polar drugs within the pharmaceutical industry and
also the growing field of metabolomics, which primarily involves the analysis of polar molecules. This technique has been described as “reversed ‘reversed phase’” [1], since in HILIC the stationary phase is polar and the aqueous portion of the mobile phase acts as the stronger solvent, which is the opposite of conventional reversed phase chromatography.