A 14 Parameter Study of UHPLC’s for Method Development Transfer and Troubleshooting

Five ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) instruments were compared to one another by examining the overall system performance and key functions of the system parts including: pump, auto-sampler, thermo-stated column compartment, and the detector. The five UHPLC systems used in this study were: ThermoFisher Vanquish, Agilent 1290 Infinity I, Agilent 1290 Infinity II, Waters Acquity I-Class, and Shimadzu Nexera X2. The identities of the systems were blinded in the results and discussion section to use this study for scientific purposes only rather than for competition and marketing. The following tests were performed to evaluate and compare the five UHPLC systems: injector linearity and precision, sample carryover, sample (autosampler) temperature accuracy, column temperature accuracy and precision, pressure ripple, pump mixing accuracy, flow rate accuracy, detector drift and noise, detector linearity, wavelength accuracy, extra-column volume, and dwell volume determination. This study presents an approach on how to test the performance of UHPLC systems along with potential problems that analysts may face when using the UHPLC systems, examples of such issues are: retention time irreproducibility, low sensitivity, method transfer failure, etc.