Development of a resolution metric for comprehensive two-dimensional chromatography

A new resolution metric for two-dimensional chromatography is proposed and tested. This resolution measurement is based on the concept of the (one-dimensional) valley-to-peak ratio, which has been adapted and modified for two-dimensional chromatography. Two questions are considered related to the computation of the resolution of a given (two-dimensional) peak. First, the concept of peak neighbourhood is revised, since it changes drastically from one- to two-dimensional chromatography. In a chromatogram resulting from a two-dimensional analysis, one peak may be surrounded by more than two neighbouring peaks. However, the neighbouring peaks can be remote from the peak or some interfering peaks may be in between. In these cases, it is not meaningful to compute the resolution between them. A method is proposed to determine whether a resolution measurement between two two-dimensional peaks is reasonable. Second, a measurement of the valley-to-peak ratio in two-dimensional chromatography is proposed. The measurement is based on the concept of the saddle point (which is defined for two-dimensional surface plots). A study of the correlation of the valley-to-peak ratio with the error obtained for quantification is presented. The new metric can be used as an estimator of the quantification errors. Also, valley-to-peak ratios can be calculated for one or more target peak(s) to estimate the separation quality of the entire chromatogram. This makes the proposed measurement suitable for optimisation purposes. Although the algorithm was developed for GC x GC, preliminary studies suggested that its application to other two-dimensional separation methods (e.g. LC x LC) should only require minor modification (if any).