It is not an industrial secrecy that most brand name products exhibit slightly acidic or basic surfaces. As the surfaces of these brand name columns are deactivated with either basic silanes or acidic silanes, these surfaces are bias inert to basic or acidic compounds. The methods and processes of surface deactivation employed by these companies lack of controllability, the surfaces are then not completely deactivated.
In other words, they are not totally inert. As a result of non-neutral surface, these brand name columns are more or less limited in certain applications, such as the analyses of amines, sulfurs, pesticides, environmental sample, and others. Non-neutral surface of a column not only produces inaccurate quantification but also sometimes produce small differences in separation and column selectivity. An example would be DB-5 columns are slightly different from HP-5 columns.

Abel has developed a proprietary surface deactivation technique to produce totally inert surface columns. In order to ensure the totally insert surface, AB columns are tested with toughest test sample contained base, acid and alcohol among industry standards. Table III lists the components of two test samples of Abel uses.

Low column bleed is an industrial trend to push applications to new limits, such as temperature limit, and detection limit. Low column bleed means long life time of column. Low column bleed also means crosslinked and bonded stationary phases.

All stationary phases of AB GC columns are carefully made in-house to ensure controllable column selectivity and low column bleed. Most stationary phases are crosslinked and bonded after manufacturing. Without any compromise, most AB GC columns are tested for column bleed. Table IV shows the specs of AB-5MS.