Chitin and chitosan have great potential to be applied in industrial scale separation processes because they are natural, renewal biopolymers that have the added benefits of being nontoxic and mechanically and chemically stable. They have been readily used in liquid chromatography as a stationary phase due to a variety of functional groups present in the unit of the polymer chain: an amine group at the C2 position, –CH₃ moieties in the acetamido group at the C2 position, and –OH groups at the C3 and C6 positions. The biopolymers have been tested as a stationary phase for chromatographic separation of several compounds: metal cations, proteins, food compounds, drugs, or chiral mixtures. They have been used as a coating on silica or cellulose particles without any modification, or after modification with different substituents. The presented review outlines the state-of-the-art research pertaining to chitin and chitosan application in liquid chromatography.

几丁质和壳聚糖具有广泛的工业潜力，因为它们是天然的，更新的生物聚合物，具有无毒，机械和化学稳定的优点。由于存在于聚合物链单元中的各种官能团，它们已很容易在液相色谱法中用作固定相：C2位的胺基–CH ₃乙酰氨基基团的C2位和–OH基团的C3和C6位。生物聚合物已作为固定相进行测试，可用于色谱分离多种化合物：金属阳离子，蛋白质，食品化合物，药物或手性混合物。它们已被用作二氧化硅或纤维素颗粒的涂层，而没有进行任何修饰，或者在使用不同的取代基进行修饰之后。本综述概述了与甲壳素和壳聚糖在液相色谱中的应用有关的最新研究。