Question

What are the advantages of fused-silica-capillary columns compared with glass or metal columns?

Short answer

The fused silica open tubular columns have much thinner walls, high physical strength, flexibility and have lower reactivity as compare to the glass or metal columns.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

Determine the advantages of fused silica capillary columns compared with glass or metal columns.

Open tubular columns and fused silica open tubular columns 

The open tubular columns are the columns, which have open flow path. These are known as capillary columns. The most widely used open tubular columns is fused silica open tubular columns (FSWC).

The fused silica open tubular columns (FSWC) are formed from purified silica that contains fewer amounts of metal oxides.

Advantages of fused silica open tubular columns compared with glass or metal columns

The advantages of fused silica open tubular columns (FSWC) are as follows :

• The fused silica open tubular columns have much thinner walls as compared to the glass columns.

• The FSWC have high physical strength, flexibility and have lower reactivity as compare to the glass columns.

• These is an outside protective polyamide coating is applied, as capillary tubing provides strength to it. Therefore the resulting in flexible columns and can be bent into coils.