The Swiss Knife of analytics

Shimadzu has released its new Nexera UC unified chromatography system. It is the world’s first-ever unified and fully automated instrument combining supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) with supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). The SFE/SFC/MS platform merges quick and easy online sample preparation with advanced chromatographic analysis and high sensitivity detection. The Nexera UC serves a wide range of applications, e.g. monitoring of pesticides in food products, additives in polymers, drug discovery in pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals and environmental controls or cleaning validation to name just a few.

Increasing speed and efficiency while reducing the risk of human error in the analytical workflow The Nexera UC online SFE-SFC approach eliminates the need for tedious, manual sample pretreatment. All samples are extracted under light-shielding, anaerobic conditions, enabling highly reproducible analysis even of unstable compounds that are easily oxidized or degraded using a conventional liquid extraction method. Notably, analysis of pesticides in food products, with the state-of-the-art Nexera UC system and sample preparation in the SFE unit takes just a fraction of the time needed using the traditional QuEChERS method. Furthermore, the fully automated Nexera UC system offers much higher recovery rates of target analytes while significantly reducing the risk of human error during sample pretreatment.

Nexera UC provides hassle-free, highly efficient sample extraction of up to 48 samples with easy on-line transfer to chromatographic separation and MS/MS detection. The system achieves the highest levels of sensitivity due to splitless injection of the entire eluent volume.

'Green' chromatography

The innovative Nexera UC system offers a supplementary chromatographic technique to conventional LC and GC analysis that enables separation of an even wider range of non-polar to very polar analytes. Automated extraction and chromatography are achieved using a mobile phase of supercritical carbon dioxide, which exhibits the solubility of a liquid with the diffusivity of a gas. Solvent strength can be increased by adding a polar co-solvent. SFE and SFC are therefore faster, more efficient, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than other methods using large amounts of toxic organic solvents.

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