What is the role of theoretical plates in HPLC?

Some points on role of theoretical plates in HPLC are:

• Theoretical plates provide a numerical efficiency value calculated from retention time and peak width measurements.
• They quantify how effectively an HPLC column converts solute migration into narrow, well-defined chromatographic peaks.
• Theoretical plate numbers allow efficiency assessment under fixed operating conditions such as flow rate and mobile phase composition.

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