Supercritical chromatography was originally introduced in 1962 aiming to substitute both the gas and the liquid chromatography. After almost 50 years, this separation technique is still trying to find its place in the marked, been used only in some special cases.
The main reasons for that can be the lack of robustness of the developed equipment, in general adapted from the conventional chromatographies, and the poor comprehension of the supercritical fluids by the users of the technique. The new commercial systems developed exclusively for supercritical chromatography are increasing the use of this separation method and are allowing to exploit the advantages of the supercritical fluids such as low viscosity and high diffusion coefficient, leading to faster and more efficient separations, and also permitting lower quantity organic solvent necessary in the process, resulting in some interesting environmental advantages. In this chapter, the main characteristics and advances of the supercritical chromatography used in the analytical, semi‑‑preparative, and preparative scales are reviewed. Furthermore, the more relevant stationary phases, detection methods, and parameters used in the process optimization are discussed.
