Why ultra high performance liquid chromatography produces more tailing peaks than high performance liquid chromatography, why it does not matter and how it can be addressed.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate, with experiments and with computer simulations based on a firm chromatographic theory, that the wide spread perception of that the United States Pharmacopeia tailing factor must be lower than 2 (T(f)<2) is questionable when using the latest generation of LC equipment. It is shown that highly efficient LC separations like those obtained with sub-2 μm porous and 2.7 μm superficially porous particles (UHPLC) produce significantly higher T(f)-values than the corresponding separation based on 3 μm porous particles (HPLC) when the same amount of sample is injected.