Preliminary examination of the photoionization detector for microbore column supercritical fluid chromatography

A photoionization detector (PID) has been evaluated for its applications in supercritical fluid chromatography using microbore columns. The PID is a nondestructive detector which is sensitive to the concentration of the analyte. Thus, maximum sensitivity is obtained at low flow rates. The PID dynamic range in supercritical fluid chromatography is approximately 10 4 , which is much smaller than in gas chromatography. Although the PID appears to complement the flame ionization detector (FID) in many respects, it should be considered of limited value in environmental trace analyses due to the large cell volume. The PID can be used with both conventional and microbore packed columns; however, the detector used in this study is not suitable in its present design for capillary SFC.