HPLC-SPE-NMR - A novel hyphenation technique

High performance liquid chromatography-solid phase extraction-nuclear magnetic resonance (HPLC-SPE-NMR) is a novel hyphenation technology that concentrates single chromatographic peaks to elution volumes matching those of NMR flow probes. The SPE unit facilitates the solvent exchange from the mobile phase of the optimized HPLC assay to a deuterated NMR solvent. The well-defined NMR solvent conditions make spectra comparisons feasible, which means databases and spectra catalogues can be used to swiftly identify analytes. The ability to accumulate analytes on the SPE cartridges by multiple trapping reduces the need to perform residual solvent suppression experiments and allows heteronuclear NMR experiments to be performed overnight. Structure elucidation of natural products directly from crude extract HPLC samples has become the key application of this technique.