Use of ionic liquids as stationary phases in hyphenated gas chromatography techniques

In the past decades a consistent number of ionic liquids have been specifically synthesized and evaluated as stationary phase in gas chromatography. Ionic liquid, also defined as molten salts, are a class of organic non-molecular solvents liquid at room temperature (RTILs) that satisfy most of the requirements of a GC stationary phase, among which a high viscosity, the possibility to tune the selectivity (by changing the cation-anion combination) and a high thermal stability. The choice of the proper stationary phase plays a key role in the improvement/optimization of a GC method, and although the use of IL as stationary phases is still not well-established, the general interest in their applications has greatly increased, thanks to their particular properties. The present contribution provides an overview on recent evaluations and applications of IL stationary phases, focusing in particular on the use of these novel tools in hyphenated GC-based techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.