Although widely applicable to many Reversed Phase columns, the Tanaka Plot does not translate for use with columns used with ANP or HILIC methods.
What is a Tanaka plot .
Nobuo Tanaka etal devised a set of chromatographic tests that are intended to characterize the chromatographic properties of a given stationary phase. The analyst performs a separation of various test solutes in the manner described by the Tanaka test and records the resulting chromatographic values obtained in the data.
Each set of analytes used in the Plot is said to correlate with a certain parameter of the stationary phase. For example, separation of triphenylene and o-terphenyl is believed to correlate with shape selectivity characteristics since the compounds are comparable in hydrophobicity but different in shape.
The limitations of these tests are that they are run with Reversed Phase methods.
