5. Applications

5.1 General applications

The properties of supercritical fluids potentially give SPC some of the advantages of LC (solvent power and selectivity of the mobile phase, wide variety of stationary phases) and GC (universal and sensitive detection, high efficiency). However, the detection aspect remains secondary and the prerogative of a few experienced users faced with specialized problems (petroleum cuts, thermolabile derivatives, heavy compounds lacking chromophore groups...), the main field of application remaining the separation of optical isomers and, by extension, drugs. SPC therefore competes with either LC or capillary electrophoresis (CE), winning out over the former thanks to its kinetic advantages, which enable separations and their development to be carried out more rapidly,...