Comparison of Solvent Modulation with Premixed Mobile Phases for the Separation of Corticosteroids by Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

The separation of eight common corticosteroids is optimized by solvent modulation and by conventional premixed solvents. The separation is achieved on an octadecylsilica column using aqueous acetonitrile and methanol mobile phases. The optimized separations are compared with respect to accuracy, total analysis time, critical resolution, and overall quality of the separation. The solvent modulation approach compares favorably to premixed solvents in all of these respects and, hence, is demonstrated to be a very promising optimization strategy.