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Advances in the Hyphenation of Flow Analysis Techniques with Liquid Separations for Pharmaceutical Analysis.

Anastasios Economou*

This commentary critically discusses the main advances in the field of flow analysis techniques hyphenated with liquid separations for pharmaceutical analysis over the last 15 years. Flow analysis techniques provide a convenient way to perform chemical assays with significant benefits in terms of rapidity, simplicity and cost of instrumentation, economy, precision, versatility in sample handling and potential for automation. The first-generation flow injection analysis (FIA), developed in the 1970’s, has been supplemented by a host of second-generation and third-generation flow methods developed in the 1990’s and 2000’s such as sequential injection analysis (SIA) and multi-syringe flow injection analysis (MSFIA) [1]. However, the main drawback of these techniques is their limited ability to simultaneously determine several analytes. Therefore, the hyphenation of flow techniques with separation techniques is a very attractive because it enables multi-component analysis. It was the introduction of monolithic columns [2] that has made possible the direct coupling of flow techniques with liquid separations platforms and has led to the development of hyphenated approaches such as FIC, SIC and MSC [3-5]. In all these techniques, a separation column is inserted in the flow path between the point of sample introduction and the detector; the main principles of operation can be found in the relevant literature [3-7]. FIC, SIC and MSC offer distinct advantages in terms of rapidity, simplicity, versatility and capital costs compared with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and have been applied to the determination of a large number of pharmaceuticals [3-5]. When simple mixtures are considered, these hyphenated methods produce results that are comparable to HPLC [8,9]. The main advances in the hyphenation of flow analysis techniques with liquid separations for the purposes of pharmaceutical analysis are identified below