Recent trends in chiral supercritical fluid chromatography

This paper presents a review of the recent literature covering separations of enantiomers achieved with supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) or subcritical fluid chromatography. First of all, the recent progress in SFC technology are explained in relation to chiral separations. Mobile phases and operating conditions mostly encountered in current practise, instruments and stationary phases are discussed. Some elements related to fundamental studies are also given. While the pharmaceutical industry was long the principal user of chiral SFC for preparative purposes, it is now more and more in use for analytical purposes and especially pharmacokinetics. Other application fields are now emerging like the determination of different degradation rates in chiral agrochemicals, forensics, natural products and cosmetics. This review does not aim at being comprehensive but rather provides a global view of current practise of chiral resolution with SFC.