A method to investigate
electrosorption thermodynamics has been
developed by the examination of the temperature dependence of solute
retention by means of electrochemically modulated liquid chromatography
(EMLC). This hybrid technique couples electrochemistry and liquid
chromatography, which enables the manipulation of solute retention
through changes in the potential applied (E
app) to a conductive stationary phase like glassy carbon, porous graphitic
carbon, and boron-doped diamond. An understanding of the thermodynamics
of the EMLC separation mechanism would further the interpretations
of the rules to predict retention, which may also provide fundamental
insights into sorption processes and the structure of the electrical
double layer of importance to a number of other technologies (e.g.,
battery and fuel cells). This paper describes a study in which the
dependence of retention for two naphthalene disulfonates (1,5- and
2,6-naphthalene disulfonates) was measured at different fixed values
of E
app [−200 to +200 mV vs Ag/AgCl
(sat’d NaCl)] for a glassy carbon chromatographic packing that
was held at several different thermally equilibrated column temperatures
(22–55 °C). These data were analyzed using the van’t
Hoff relationship to determine the enthalpic and entropic contributions
to Gibb’s free energy for the transfer of a solute between
the mobile and stationary phases. The results for both solutes showed
that (1) the retention increased as E
app moved to more positive values, (2) the retention at each value of E
app became smaller as the column temperature
increased, and (3) the dependence of retention on temperature was
stronger as the value of E
app became more
negative. The first and second observations follow expectations for
the dependence of the electrostatic interaction strength for anionic
solutes on the charge on the electrode surface and for the temperature
dependence of the exothermic transfer of a solute from the mobile
phase to the stationary phase, respectively. The third observation
indicates that retention actually becomes more endothermic as the
value of E
app becomes more positive, which
should conceptually cause a decrease rather than an increase in retention.
This points to the somewhat surprising importance of entropy to the
overall retention mechanism. That is, the increase in retention at
increasingly positive values of E
app reflects the fact that the increase
in the entropy for solute transfer has a stronger contribution to
the transfer process than the concomitant increase in the endothermicity
of transfer. The paper concludes by briefly examining mechanistic
origins for the thermodynamic behavior of this system within the context
of the electrical double-layer theory and the hydrophobic effect,
and possible applications of this intriguing development as a tool
for the investigation of electrosorption processes in energy, colloidal,
and bioanalytical systems.