Preparative LC (Prep LC) is a powerful tool for the purification of new synthetic chemical entities and for the isolation of unknowns, including trace components, in commercial materials. The Prep LC of imaging materials introduces unique challenges for the practical separation of components and for isolating them on a scale suitable for testing or characterization.

This presentation will illustrate some of those challenges and the manner in which they were solved for imaging materials in photographic film and paper, and in the digital areas of inkjet (IJ), organic light-emitting diode (OLED), liquid crystal display (LCD), and optical molecular imaging (OMI). Techniques including micro-scale and scale-up Prep LC and fractionation, including UV-Vis and MS triggering, will be described.

One of the biggest challenges in imaging materials is the diversity of physical properties ranging from lipophilic to ionic compounds and materials with high to very low solubility. A description of Prep LC and Prep LC-MS instrumentation will be presented, followed by method development for various compound classes, including isolation of trace components and focused combinatorial libraries.