The process of increasing width and concomitant diluting of the chromatographic band as it moves down the column. The peak is injected as a narrow slug and, ideally, each separated component would be eluted as a narrow slug of pure compound if not for the process of band broadening. The measure of band broadening is bandwidth (tw) or, more correctly, the number of theoretical plates (N) in the column. Sometimes called band dispersion or band spreading.
The term "band broadening" was found in the following pages: