Current advances in carbonaceous materials for analytical applications in liquid phase

Carbonaceous materials, namely graphitized carbon black (GCB) and porous graphitic carbon (PGC), are an exciting class of stationary phases attracting remarkable attention due to their peculiar characteristics of retention behavior for non-polar and polar analytes, becoming an alternative to the typical reversed-phase stationary phases.The present review is focused on the recent and critical analytical applications of GCB and PGC in liquid phase applications. A comprehensive overview of GCB in sample preparation was done, primarily solid-phase extraction and related techniques. Traditional analytes, such as pesticides and hormones, are reviewed along with new applications, especially short-chain peptides and polar metabolites, where this sorbent allowed for filling a gap in sample preparation from complex biological matrices. The second part of the review article describes the applications of porous graphitic carbon in liquid chromatography and supercritical fluid chromatography. The discussion covers the most relevant analyte classes, with an extensive description of the advantages and disadvantages of PGC over other chromatographic techniques.