The Food and Drug Administration (FDA

USA) has issued a guidance that only the therapeutically active enantiomer of a chiral drug be brought to market. Recently

chiral molecules occupy a large proportion of therapeutic agents

chiral drugs have similar structure so powerful means of chiral drug detection and separation are needed. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has several advantages over HPLC:reduced viscosity

which decreases the pressure drop across the column

allowing faster separation;increased diffusivity

which results in sharper peaks and

thus

increased resolution;lower solvent consumption and easy solute recovery

which makes SFC particularly useful in preparative modes. SFC is increasingly used for analytical

semi-preparative and preparative purification of chiral compounds

which makes it has attracted wide interests in the pharmaceutical analysis as a useful separation technique for enantioselective separations. This review focuses mainly on the examples of enantiomer separations by SFC with mobile phases and chiral stationary phases

so as to facilitate the selection of mobile phase and stationary phase and the optimization of chromatographic conditions.