High Performance Liquid Chromatography:

During early development period of column chromatography using a 50 - 100 cm long and 1 - 5 cm diameter glass column packed with 100 - 200 µm particle size material, it was realized that column efficiency was very low taking long time for analysis. Though, it could be increased by decreasing the column length and diameter and also the particle size of the column material. This could be made possible just after 1960 while technology for producing packing material with particle size of 3 to 10 µm was developed. Further, the new technology required sophisticated instruments operating at high pressure contrary to classical system where eluent flows under gravity. The first instrument of liquid chromatograph was constructed by Csaba Horvath at Yale University, USA in 1964 who describe it as high pressure liquid chromatograph (HPLC). However, he later called the technique as high performance liquid chromatography. Thus, the new technique was named as "high pressure" or "high performance" liquid chromatography (HPLC) to distinguish it from the old procedure. Modern HPLC has emerged from the confluence of need, the human desire to technological capability; minimize work, and the theory to guide development along rational lines. In a few cases, HPLC may detect nanogram or even picogram quantities.