Building on more than 40 years of experience from both research and practical applications, Diduco is here to improve liquid chromatography and bring proven research to industry applications faster than before.
Diduco is an agile research and manufacturing partner, delivering products, services and expertise to support and enhance the liquid chromatographic analysis of polar compounds. Built on decades of scientific expertise and product development, our technologies help customers achieve dependable results in demanding environments. We combine academic research with practical industry knowledge to create tools that are both innovative and easy to integrate into everyday workflows. Our products are compatible with all major instruments, allowing clients to continue using their preferred software and equipment while achieving clearer, more reliable chromatographic data.
Our mission is to help our customers trust their data. By improving accuracy and reliability in chemical analysis, we enable laboratories and organizations to save time, reduce costs, strengthen quality control and accelerate innovation.
Over the past four decades, Diduco has built its legacy through dedicated product development and academic research carried out by numerous talented individuals across several teams. With the formation of Diduco, initiated by Prof. Knut Irgum and Dr. Tobias Jonsson, the ambition was to establish a center for liquid chromatography in northern Sweden furthering the legacy of Umeå university and successful spin-offs such as SeQuant AB, which was acquired by Merck KGaA.
Diduco is an agile research and manufacturing partner, delivering products, services and expertise to support and enhance the liquid chromatographic analysis of polar compounds. Built on decades of scientific expertise and product development, our technologies help customers achieve dependable results in demanding environments. We combine academic research with practical industry knowledge to create tools that are both innovative and easy to integrate into everyday workflows. Our products are compatible with all major instruments, allowing clients to continue using their preferred software and equipment while achieving clearer, more reliable chromatographic data.
Our mission is to help our customers trust their data. By improving accuracy and reliability in chemical analysis, we enable laboratories and organizations to save time, reduce costs, strengthen quality control and accelerate innovation.
Over the past four decades, Diduco has built its legacy through dedicated product development and academic research carried out by numerous talented individuals across several teams. With the formation of Diduco, initiated by Prof. Knut Irgum and Dr. Tobias Jonsson, the ambition was to establish a center for liquid chromatography in northern Sweden furthering the legacy of Umeå university and successful spin-offs such as SeQuant AB, which was acquired by Merck KGaA.
Today, Diduco supports laboratories worldwide in achieving maximum sensitivity and minimal background noise for numerous analyses. Our products are currently used in over 50 countries across a wide range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, food & beverage, environmental, chemical and energy & electronics.
In 2023, Diduco founder Prof. Knut Irgum was awarded the prestigious Bror Holmberg medal by the Swedish Chemical Society in recognition of his longstanding contributions to fundamental analytical chemistry research. The award reflects Diduco’s deep commitment to scientific excellence and its strong connection to advanced research and innovation.
Diduco AB was founded in 2014 by Prof. Knut Irgum, and the first employees from the recently closed site of Merck SeQuant AB were recruited. Shortly after, Dr. Tobias Jonsson joined the team with newly redesigned sustainable ion chromatography products, and the production of membrane suppressors was resumed under the brand Xenoic® following its termination by Merck KGaA. With initial support from the Swedish Innovation agency Vinnova and the local business incubators Uminova and Umeå Biotech Incubator, a website with online shop for global delivery was opened, and the portfolio was later expanded with additional products such as the ASUREX-A200 Automatic Regenerator and EQAX-TC1 carbon dioxide traps.
In 2008, Merck KGaA acquired SeQuant AB for its ZIC-HILIC column technology and ion chromatography suppressors and merged these products into their portfolio. During the following years additional products were developed and launched to a world-wide audience using Merck’s resources for production and marketing in Germany and elsewhere. The site in Umeå also acted as a global centre for technical support of analytical chromatography in general and high-performance liquid chromatography in particular, until its closure in 2014.
From 2000 to 2008 SeQuant AB pioneered commercial hydrophilic interaction chromatography by launching the first zwitterionic column ZIC-HILIC and writing the technical booklet “A Practical Guide to HILIC” which was printed in more than 10 000 copies
and is still immensely popular for download at ResearchGate and other portals. In parallel, Prof. Irgum’s research group at Umeå University continued to develop new stationary phases for HILIC and published the review “Hydrophilic Interaction Chromatography” which has received more than 1000 academic references and still is the most cited paper ever in Journal of Separation Science.
In 1987 Prof. Knut Irgum constructed and delivered the first membrane suppressor for ion chromatography from his company SciTech AB in Umeå, which later was developed into SeQuant AB. The original suppressor design was later refined, and the product portfolio expanded to also include a suppressor regenerator plus accessories for ion chromatography, but sales and distribution was geographically limited to Sweden and a few other countries.
