Electrokinetic capillary chromatography (EKC) is an advanced technique for determining whether ionic macromolecules, in which solutes are distributed from the bulk aqueous phase, undergo separation.1,2 Micelles formed spontaneously by ionic surfactants 3,4 and ionic micelle-like polymers 5-8 function as well as pseudostationary phases in EKC. The solute retentivity and separability in macromolecules may be explained as being due to the formation of hydrophobic interior regions and the solute distribution within these regions. [9][10][11] In the present study, chiral linear polymers derived from Nacryloyl-L-amino acid derivatives were found to aggregate in aqueous solution, and the polymers to enantioselectively take in racemic amino acid derivatives during the EKC separation process. Various chiral polymers have been prepared by the thermal telomerization of N-acryloyl-L-valine and N-acryloyl-Lalanine derivatives using 3-mercaptopropionic acid (3-MPA) as a radical transfer agent. 12 For two series of polymers, the derivatives used were methyl and tert-butyl esters to obtain carboxylic acid, which was subsequently cleaved, with Nmethylamide presumably remaining in the polymer. Amino acid residues of polymers are lined up repeatedly on straight carbon backbones formed by the polymerization of acryloyl groups, as is apparent from Fig. 1. The elongation of a monomer that determines the molecular weights of the resulting polymers was controlled by mixing the ratios of the amino acid derivatives to 3-MPA. Removal of the ester groups from both types of unimolecular polymers and copolymers rendered them water-soluble. Dissociation in the carboxylic acid present in the residues should change according to the pH of the migrating solution, and thus aggregation of the polymers that permits enantiomer absorption may be controlled by electric repulsion between these functional groups. The pH dependence is discussed based on the microscopic hydrophobicity, as assessed from the fluorescence of pyrene adsorbed onto the polymers in water.
ExperimentalEKC was conducted using a Model 270A capillary electrophoresis system (PE Applied Biosystems, Tokyo, Japan). Chromatography was carried out at 25˚C using fused-silica tubing (50 µm i.d. × 70 cm, 50 cm effective length; PE Applied Biosystems). Methanol was used as the sample solvent, and the sample solution was injected hydrodynamically into a capillary over a period of 0.2 s. The polymer hydrophobicity was determined from the intensity ratio of the pyrene emission peak at 383 nm (I383) relative to that at 373 nm (I373) (I383/I373) in a 2.0 w/v% aqueous solution saturated with pyrene. Pyrene was excited at 337 nm and its fluorescence spectrum was measured with a fluorospectrophotometer (FP-777; JASCO, Tokyo, Japan) at 25˚C. 12 A 1 H-NMR measurement was made using a Varian Gemini-300 (300 MHz NMR). The internal standard was chloroform (7.26 ppm) in a deuteriochloroform solution.
Preparation of N-acryloyl-L-alanine methyl ester (monomer 1), N-acryloyl-L-valine methyl ester (monomer 2a) ...