Study on retention in liquid chromatography.

After joining the faculty at Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) in 1978, the author has found two areas in separation sciences where microcolumn liquid chromatography (micro-LC) can be beneficial. One is the hyphenated techniques between many spectroscopic methods such as mass (MS), infrared (FT-IR) and atomic emission (ICP), and micro-LC. The other one is rather difficult, but basic and theoretical approach which deals with retention mechanism in LC. The latter project has especially been giving him a lot of scientific funs and honors in the last 20 years. On the occasion of being awarded by The Society for Chromatographic Sciences the author would like to summarize his contributions to this topic which asks us "What Is Chromatographic Retention?"