General guidelines
July 7, 2014, 715003736IVD Rev. C 23
2 Optimizing Performance
Follow the advice and guidelines in this chapter to help ensure optimum
performance from your ACQUITY UPLC I-Class IVD system.
General guidelines
ACQUITY UPLC I-Class system guidelines differ from those governing
standard HPLC practices primarily because a chromatography that uses
small (less than 2 µm) particles places certain constraints on the system.
Chromatography performed on a UPLC system is of a much smaller-scale
than that performed using an HPLC system, yet it gives a higher resolution.
Moreover, analysis time for UPLC is shorter, and solvent and sample
consumption are significantly reduced.
The ACQUITY UPLC I-Class chromatograph requires optimum performance
from the sample manager because sample dispersion is more evident when
using smaller columns. The reduction in chromatographic run time also
makes efficient management of cycle time essential.
When performing fast UPLC analyses, note that a peak of interest can be less
than 0.5 seconds wide. Waters recommends a sampling rate of 25 to 50 points
across a peak, which provides good quantitation. Sampling rates faster than
Contents:
Topic Page
General guidelines ........................................................................... 23
Carryover.......................................................................................... 25
Contamination.................................................................................. 26
Temperature..................................................................................... 26
Reproducibility................................................................................. 26
Cycle time (between injections)....................................................... 26
Preventing leaks .............................................................................. 27
Sample preparation ......................................................................... 28