Sulfonated cellulose tris(3,5-dimethylphenylcarbamate) (SCDMPC)-coated zirconia monolith (ZM) was used as the chiral stationary phase in capillary electrochromatography for separation of enantiomers of ten chiral compounds in acetonitrile (ACN)-phosphate buffer mixtures as the eluent. Influences of the ACN content, buffer concentration and pH on chiral separation have been investigated. Separation data on SCDMPC-ZM have been compared with those on CDMPC-ZM. Resolution factors were better on SCDMPC-ZM than CDMPC-ZM while retention factors were in general shorter on the former than the latter. Best chiral resolutions on SCDMPC-ZM were obtained with the eluent of 50% ACN containing 50 mM phosphate at pH around 4.Key Words : Chiral separation, Zirconia monolith, Sulfonated cellulose 3,5-dimethylphenylcarbamate, Capillary electrochromatography
IntroductionCapillary electrochromatography (CEC) is a hybrid technique of HPLC and CE, and has been increasingly utilized in studies on the development and evaluation of separation methods including chiral separations.1-3 It provides high efficiency because of the flat profile of electroosmotic flow (EOF) to pump the mobile phase and ability to separate charged as well as uncharged compounds through electrophoresis and chromatographic separation.3 Several reviews have been reported on enantioseparations using CEC as a separation technique.1-4 Three types of columns including, open-tubular, particulate-packed and monolithic capillaries are used for CEC.5 Monolithic columns are becoming attractive alternative to particle-packed columns in HPLC and electrochromatography.6-8 Monolithic columns are devoid of problems and difficulties associated with packed capillary columns, including burdensome packing of stationary phase particles in a capillary and frits that cause formation of air bubbles during the analysis which results in reduction of separation efficiency, and tend to break easily.9-12 The monolithic columns allow fast mass transfer at lower pressure drops, enabling much faster separations. The continuous monolithic bed in the capillary column also allows high linear velocities that enable high throughput screening and fast separations of enantiomers.
6-8,13Among various classes of chiral selectors 14,15 polysaccharides have been widely used as the chiral stationary phase (CSP). A great number of polysaccharide derivatives including cellulose, amylose, chitin, chitosan, galactosamine, curdlan, dextran, xylan, and inulin have been in use for chiral separations. 16 The derivatives of cellulose and amylose usually exhibit higher chiral recognition ability than the other type polysaccharides. A number of HPLC separations for a large number of chiral compounds in different classes on polysaccharide-immobilized silica 17-20 and polymer columns.21 The polysaccharide-based columns can be used in normal phase, polar organic and reversed-phase mode.
22While silica-based stationary phases have received wide acceptance due to their well-studied surface chemistry, drawbacks of silica-ba...