HPLC

HPLC — high-performance liquid chromatography — is a lab method that separates a mixture into its parts so an analyst can measure how much of each part is present.

Where the word comes from

The core word is chromatography, from the Greek chrōma, “color,” and graphein, “to write” — literally “color writing.” The name dates to the early 1900s, when the Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet separated plant pigments into colored bands on a column. The high-performance version — HPLC — came in the late 1960s and 1970s, when pumps and fine column packings made the separation far faster and sharper.

What it means here

The sample is dissolved and pushed under pressure through a thin tube packed with fine material, called a column. Different molecules travel through the column at different speeds, so they come out at different times. A detector records each one as a peak on a chart. The size of the main peak, compared with all peaks together, gives the purity percent reported on a Certificate of Analysis. When a product page here states a purity figure, HPLC is usually the instrument behind that number.

Words you’ll see together

• column — the packed tube the sample travels through
• peak — the signal one compound makes on the chart
• retention time — how long a compound takes to come out of the column
• chromatogram — the full chart of peaks from one run
• mobile phase — the liquid that carries the sample through the column
• area percent — the main peak’s share of all peaks; the purity number

Related terms

• Purity — the percent value that an HPLC run produces
• Mass spectrometry — often paired with HPLC to confirm which compound each peak is
• Certificate of Analysis — the batch report where HPLC results are listed

Where it appears in our catalog

• Purity and testing FAQ — where HPLC fits in our batch testing
• Reading a Certificate of Analysis — how to spot the HPLC section on the report
• Melanotan-2 — a product whose compound class has published HPLC stability research

References

1. Cristea CD (2023). Cationic exchange SPE + triple-quadrupole UHPLC-MS/MS for detection of GHRHs in urine samples. Anal Biochem. PMID 37806509 · DOI 10.1016/j.ab.2023.115336
2. Chawathe A, Sharma N (2026). LC-HRMS stability profile of afamelanotide: 14 distinct degradation products under acid/base/oxidative/UV/thermal stress. J Pharm Biomed Anal. PMID 41547183

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