Waters developed the Viridis supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) columns to give laboratories using SFC a reliable source of high-quality columns for compound purification.
When paired with Waters TharSFC instrumentation, these give laboratories a single source for both instrumentation and columns.
Viridis columns are available in two chemistries: 2-ethylpyridine and silica.
Waters Viridis SFC Columns are manufactured by Waters ISO 9000 facilities under comprehensive quality guidelines and feature the company's Optimum Bed Density (OBD) technology, designed to produce mechanically stable columns with longer lifetimes.
SFC is becoming the preferred approach for the isolation and purification of target compounds at the milligram to multi-gram scale.
SFC typically uses carbon dioxide (CO2) as the main supercritical mobile phase.
As a result, SFC separations are faster, require shorter re-equilibration times and offer higher throughput than those typically associated with conventional liquid chromatography.
As a chromatographic mobile phase, CO2 is a low-cost solvent alternative to the organic solvents typically employed in the laboratory.
It is inert, which makes it safer to use.
Using CO2, laboratories typically experience a 70 - 95 per cent reduction in solvent purchase and disposal costs over organic solvents.
Scientists at Pfizer have reported that SFC has resulted in increased productivity and throughput for the company's Structure Elucidation Group laboratories.
Most notably it has resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in the time needed to turn around the isolation portion of a structure elucidation project when compared with semi-preparative reversed-phase HPLC.
This in turn has helped them expedite candidate decision making.
With the introduction of Viridis columns, Waters now offers SFC and SFC/MS instrumentation and software for both analytical and preparative applications backed by Waters' service and support organisations.
