Use of ionic liquids as stationary phases in hyphenated gas chromatography techniques

In the past decades a consistent number of ionic liquids have been specifically synthesized and evaluated
as stationary phase in gas chromatography. Ionic liquid, also defined as “molten salts”, are a class of
organic non-molecular solvents liquid at room temperature (RTILs) that satisfy most of the requirements
of a GC stationary phase, among which a high viscosity, the possibility to tune the selectivity (by changing
the cation–anion combination) and a high thermal stability. The choice of the proper stationary phase
plays a key role in the improvement/optimization of a GC method, and although the use of IL as stationary
phases is still not well-established, the general interest in their applications has greatly increased, thanks
to their particular properties. The present contribution provides an overview on recent evaluations and
applications of IL stationary phases, focusing in particular on the use of these novel tools in hyphenated
GC-based techniques.