Faculty Research
Alphabetical · By research area

Dr. Lucy's research is in the area of analytical separations. The major objective of the research is to develop a fundamental physico-chemical understanding of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ion chromatography (IC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). This fundamental understanding is then coupled with collaborations with instrument manufacturers such as Dionex and industrial partners such as Dow Chemicals and Syncrude Canada Ltd. to enhance and even simplify the analytical methods.

Examples of recent research by undergraduate and graduate students in the lab are the development of:

• self-assembled coatings based on supported phospholipid bilayers for protein separations using capillary electrophoresis;
• synthesis of novel high performance liquid chromatography phases
• ion chromatography and hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatographic methods that are 20-times faster than conventional methods;
• petroleomics analysis based on HPLC and Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS).

Professional skills development, as detailed in C.A. Lucy, Talanta 2000, 51, 1125-1147.

Students have received awards from NSERC, Alberta Innovates, the American Chemical Society, the Canadian Society of Chemistry and the University of Alberta. Past students found employment in academia, the pharmaceutical and petroleum industries and government labs.

Selected Publications

Stuart D. Chambers, Christopher A. Pohl and Charles A. Lucy (2011), Agglomerated carbon-based phases for anion exchange chromatography, Journal of Chromatography A, 1218, 263-269.

Amy M. MacDonald, Mahmoud F. Bahnasy and Charles A. Lucy (2011) “A Modified Supported Bilayer/Diblock Copolymer – A Tunable Coating for Capillary Electrophoresis", Journal of Chromatography A, 1218, 178-184.

Chen Liang and Charles A. Lucy (2010) “Characterization of ion chromatography columns based on hydrophobicity and hydroxide eluent strength”, Journal of Chromatography A, 1217, 8154-8160.

Nicole E. Oro and Charles A. Lucy (2010) “Comparison of hypercrosslinked polystyrene columns for the separation of nitrogen group-types in petroleum using high performance liquid chromatography”, Journal of Chromatography A 1217, 6178-6185.

M. Donna Gulcev, Teague M. McGinitie, Mahmoud F. Bahnasy and Charles A. Lucy (2010), “Surfactant bilayer coatings in narrow-bore capillaries in capillary electrophoresis”, Analyst, 135, 2688-2693.

Mohammed E.A. Ibrahim, Ting Zhou and Charles A. Lucy (2010) “An agglomerated silica monolith for hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) separations”, Journal of Separation Science, 33, 773-778.