Who is Mr. Monolith

I used this question as one of my opening slide when I have presented my results to a broader audience than only chromatographic people.

So if you ask who is Mr. Monolith you have to also know when you ask. If before 1990 or after that year. Because …

In past monolith was considered to be a large single upright block of stone, especially one that was shaped into a column by people living in ancient times, and that may have had some religious meaning.

Currently and in the future is monolith understand as porous rod inside the capillary, which arise during the in-situ polymerization. There are silica-based and organic polymer based monoliths, which are very easy to prepare and used like a stationary phase for HPLC and CEC.

And I have no information about its religious meaning. Yet.

The main difference (when compared to conventional particulate packing materials) is in the internal structure of monolith. Monolith is one piece of porous material which fills whole volume of chromatographic column (usually capillary). The material contains significant amount of interconnected pores which allow flow of the mobile phase through the column at very low pressure. Thus, (when simplify) we can say that monoliths might be used at higher flow-rates of mobile phase and therefore significantly decrease the separation times.

The picture on the right shows you the main difference in their internal structure for packed (a) and monolithic (b) chromatographic column (H. Oberacher, C.G. Huber, Trends in Analytical Chemistry 21 (2002) 166 – 174.).

And this is what I do

I prepare monoliths by in situ polymerization of liquid organic monomers inside the capillary and use them as a stationary phases in capillary liquid chromatography. By changing the composition of polymerization mixture I can tune the properties of resulting columns and prepare the columns tailored for each and one application – from fast gradient elution of proteins to quick separation of small polar molecules at constant composition of mobile phase.

In case you are interested you might find more information on my Research page.