WHAT: Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) has introduced next-generation Acquity™ and XBridge™ Biphenyl Liquid Chromatography Columns with MaxPeak™ Premier Technology, designed to deliver enhanced aromatic selectivity with exceptionally low UV bleed and robust, wide-range pH stability. Built on Waters’ trusted Ethylene Bridged Hybrid (BEH™) Hybrid Particle Platform and paired with inert MaxPeak Premier Technology, these columns provide reliable, reproducible performance across LC and LCMS workflows for small molecule pharmaceutical method development, bioanalytical, and food and environmental applications.

The new Biphenyl columns offer alternative selectivity to traditional C18 and Phenyl phases, enabling improved resolution of aromatic and structurally-similar compounds, while maintaining clean baselines and consistent performance throughout method development and routine analysis.

WHY: Method developers often rely on pH and stationary phase selectivity to resolve complex aromatic compounds, yet existing biphenyl phases can introduce trade-offs, including elevated UV bleed, limited pH stability, and inconsistent batch-to-batch performance, compromising sensitivity, integration accuracy, and reproducibility. Waters’ new biphenyl columns address these challenges by delivering ≥10× lower UV bleed, particularly under acidic conditions, supporting accurate low-level quantitation and stable baselines for UV and MS detection. Combined with a wide usable pH range (pH 1.5–10) and industry-leading batch-to-batch reproducibility, the columns provide confidence in long-term method performance without forcing compromises between selectivity, robustness, and sensitivity.

HOW: This performance is enabled by a novel trifunctionally-bonded biphenyl stationary phase, engineered on Waters’ 130 Å BEH Hybrid Particle Technology to enhance phase stability and minimize ligand loss across the full pH range. The column chemistry delivers balanced hydrophobic and aromatic selectivity, leveraging enhanced π–π interactions to improve the retention and resolution of aromatic compounds, including challenging positional and structural isomers.

In addition, MaxPeak Premier Technology High Performance Surfaces (HPS) are applied to the column hardware, creating an inert, hybrid surface that minimizes analyte–metal interactions. This improves analyte recovery, sensitivity, and reproducibility, while mitigating metal-related effects such as adduct formation observed in mass spectrometry – delivering reliable, out-of-the-box performance for both LC and LCMS methods.

By combining differentiated biphenyl selectivity with exceptionally low UV bleed, wide-range pH stability, and inert MaxPeak Premier Hardware, Waters’ new Acquity and XBridge Biphenyl Columns overcome the traditional trade-offs associated with biphenyl phases. The result is a robust, reproducible solution that gives analytical scientists greater confidence in both method development and long-term routine analysis, delivering reliable performance across LC and LC-MS workflows, without compromise.