ZirChrom Separations, Inc. is a company formed in 1995 located in Anoka, Minnesota, USA. ZirChrom manufactures a full line of zirconia-based high performance chromatographic materials for the analytical analysis of compounds primarily by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
Silica gel, alumina or polymeric HPLC stationary phases, which are widely used today, are subject to poor performance under some operating conditions such as high mobile phase pH (> pH 8) and elevated column temperatures, respectively. Alternatively, zirconia is chemically stable over the entire pH range from 1-14, and is also thermally stable. Due to the toughness of zirconia, ZirChrom has adopted the rhinoceros as its company symbol.
The extreme stability of zirconia and its unique chromatographic selectivity allows for the optimization of separation conditions, which are totally incompatible with other types of supports. As with the more traditional HPLC supports, a wide variety of analyses may be performed including amino acids, peptides, proteins, nucleic acids (RNA and DNA), carbohydrates, pesticides, environmental samples, clinical samples and pharmaceuticals to name just a few.
Zirconia-based supports promise to revolutionize the way that liquid chromatographic analyses are done. These supports will last longer, and allow for faster more selective separations resulting in significant cost savings per analysis.
