In chemical analysis, chromatography is a laboratory technique for the
separation of a mixture into its components. The mixture is dissolved in a
fluid solvent (gas or liquid) called the mobile phase , which carries it
through a system (a column, a capillary tube, a plate, or a sheet) on which a
material called the stationary phase is fixed. Because the different
constituents of the mixture tend to have different affinities for the
stationary phase and are retained for different lengths of time depending on
their interactions with its surface sites, the constituents travel at
different apparent velocities in the mobile fluid, causing them to separate.
The separation is based on the differential partitioning between the mobile
and the stationary phases.