Food, drugs, dyes, extracts, and minerals are all
made up of complex elements, and utilizing unidimensional chromatography
to separate them is inefficient and insensitive. This has sparked the
invention of several linked chromatography methods, each of them with
distinct separation principles and affinity for the analyte of interest.
Multidimensional chromatography consists of the combination of multiple
chromatography techniques, with great benefits at the level of
efficiency, peak capacity, precision, and accuracy of the analysis,
while reducing the time required for the analysis. Various coupled
chromatography techniques have recently emerged, including liquid
chromatography–gas chromatography (LC–GC), gas chromatography–gas
chromatography (GC–GC), liquid chromatography–liquid chromatography
(LC–LC), GCMS–MS, LCMS–MS, supercritical fluid techniques with
chromatography techniques, and electro-driven multidimensional
separation techniques. In this paper, the different coupled
chromatography techniques will be discussed, along with their wide
spectrum of applications for food, flavor, and environmental analysis,
as well as their usefulness for the pharmaceutical, color, and dyes
industries.