Commercial availability of advanced chromatographic phases

[wjcheong]

It is very difficult to obtain the state-of-the art stationary HPLC phases such as fully porous C18 phases with the size of 3um or less, C18 core-shell phases, and HILIC phases, etc. The companies sell only the packed columns. They do not sell the raw material (bare silica particles) for the phases, either.
I wonder if any of the chromatographic phases or bare silica particles is commercially available. It will be appreciated if such information is posted.

[Andy Alpert]

Speaking as a manufacturer of columns and bulk materials, here's an analysis of the economics of this industry which should answer your question:

The chromatography product business can be divided into three categories:
1) Manufacture of the bulk material;
2) Packing the columns;
3) Selling the products.

The manufacture of the bulk materials has the highest capital expense, is potentially the most hazardous, and is the least profitable of these three categories. No company that sold only bulk materials has survived. That's why companies in this field are reluctant to part with the profits from categories 2) and 3).

Our company's policy is to sell modest amounts of our better bulk materials for the benefit of people who want to pack a column or two themselves. We decline to sell large amounts of the better bulk materials, though, since that would permit someone to compete with us in the more profitable operation of packing columns.

[Vlad Orlovsky]

There are numerous suppliers who can sell you bulk unmodified silica gels and some of the phases - Silicycle, Daiso, Fuji, etc.

[Gerhard Kratz]

Good Morning from the black forest.

I agree with both, Andy and Vlad.
At the beginning we have the manufacturer of the silica and the manufacturer of the silanes to modify the silica to C18, C8, C4 or what so ever.
I'm with a manufacturer of silanes and we do a lot custome made silanes, with NDA for different manufacturers of industrial chromatography and analytical columns. Beside the costs for new developement of silanes and production we keep an eye on the shelflife of the products. At the end we have a price in € per kg.
More important than costs is the reliability and quality issues with packed columns. Take bulk C18 and ask 5 different column packers to pack analytical columns. They all will pack excellent quality but different. The manufacturer of analytical columns wants to have the same packing quality all over the world.
For me that is the most important issue, quality of the columns where ever you purchase and use them. One reason that for new developed high tech columns bulk is not available for self packers.
Hope in Orlando we will have better weather than here in the moment.

[lmh]

... as an end-user, I'm sceptical too. A good column material will only give good performance if it's well packed, and I'm far from convinced that many labs can really, really do a good job of the packing. It would harm a column material manufacturer's reputation if their material were judged by the results of mediocre packing by an end-user.

Do-it-yourself operations in labs are very much a niche occupation for a very small number of specialist labs trying to do something highly unusual. Most labs trying to build their own stuff are motivated by price, but if they worked through the economics would realise it's horribly misguided. For example, I know people who create and polish their own nano-spray tips for MS, and although they achieve good results, it takes them so long that the value of their time vastly exceeds the cost of an equivalent commercial version.

[wjcheong]

There are numerous suppliers who can sell you bulk unmodified silica gels and some of the phases - Silicycle, Daiso, Fuji, etc.

Thank you for the valuable information. It is important to know that there are some companies selling advanced chromatographic stationary phases even though they are not the major companies. I found that Silicycle sells the conventional spherical silica particles with a particles size of 3 um or less and the corresponding C18 modified phases with a minimum order of 5g and Daiso and
Fuji sell similar products with a minimum order of 25g and 10g, respectively.
We are involved in development of new advanced chromatographic phases. For comparison purposes, we need samples of the state-of-the art stationary phases.

However, we still cannot find any company that sells core-shell stationary phases.