Functional group contributions to the retention of analytes in reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography

Standardization of chromatographic signals - Part II: Expanding instrument-agnostic fingerprints to reverse phase liquid chromatography

There is a large amount of literature relating to multivariate analytical methods using liquid chromatography together with multivariate chemometric/data mining methods in the food science field. Nevertheless, dating the obtained results cannot be compared as they are based on data acquired by a particular analytical instrument, thus they are instrument-dependant. Therefore, this creates difficulties in generating a database large enough to gather together all the variability of the samples. The solution to this problem is to obtain an instrument-agnostic chromatographic signal that is independent of the chromatographic state, i.e., measuring instrument or particular condition of the same instrument from which it was acquired. This paper describes the methodology to be followed to obtain standardized instrumental fingerprints when liquid chromatography is used for prior separation. For this purpose both internal and external chemical standards series are used as references. As an application example, we have applied this methodology for the determination of biophenols in olive oil by liquid chromatography coupled to ultraviolet-visible detector (LC-UV), using three different LC-UV instruments. The instrument-agnostic fingerprints obtained show a high grade of similarity, regardless of the state of the chromatographic system or the time of acquisition.

High-performance liquid chromatographic separation of dihydropyrimidine racemates on polysaccharide-derived chiral stationary phases

The chromatographic behavior of a set of racemic dihydropyrimidines (DHPMs) has been evaluated on two polysaccharide-derived chiral stationary phases under normal phase conditions. One of these is coated, the other chemically immobilized. The outstanding solvent compatibility of the immobilized chiral stationary phase (CSP) permits the use of solvents such as ethyl acetate (EtOAc) that are unsuitable for coated supports, for which traditional 2-propanol:hexanes mixtures have been employed. Drastic changes in the chromatographic retention and resolution of DHPMs and, in general, in the separation performances have been observed for the two systems. From a practical point of view, EtOAc has been proven to be a better choice for the separation of this important class of compounds. By comparing molecules different in specific positions of their scaffolds, hypotheses concerning the role of individual chemical groups on retention and selectivity have been done. These effects have been quantified, in some cases, in terms of standard Gibbs energy variations. Even if no chromatographic measurements have been made under nonlinear conditions, clear indications of the potential use of immobilized chiral adsorptive media operated with EtOAc:hexanes mixtures for preparative separations of DHPMs have been evidenced.

Retention in gas–liquid chromatography with a polyethylene oxide stationary phase: Molecular simulation and experiment

Configurational-bias Monte Carlo simulations in the isobaric-isothermal Gibbs ensemble were carried out to investigate the partitioning of normal alkanes, primary and secondary alcohols, symmetric alkyl ethers and arenes between a helium vapor phase and a polyethylene oxide stationary phase (M(W)=382 g mol(-1)). The united-atom version of the transferable potentials for phase equilibria force field was used to model all solutes, polyethylene oxide and helium. The Gibbs free energies of transfer and Kovats retention indices of the solutes were calculated directly from the partition constants at two different temperatures, 353 and 393 K. Chromatographic experiments on a Carbowax 20M retentive phase were performed for the same set of solutes and temperatures ranging from 333 to 413 K. The predicted retention indices for alcohols, ethers and arenes are overestimated by about 120, 70 and 20 retention index units, respectively, pointing to an overestimation of the first-order electrostatic interactions in the model system. Molecular-level analysis shows that hydrogen-bonding and dipole-dipole interactions lead to orientational ordering for the alcohol and ether analytes, whereas the weaker dipole-quadrupole interactions for the arene solutes are not sufficient to induce orientational ordering. The retention indices of alcohols and ethers decrease with increasing temperature because of the large entropic cost of hydrogen-bonding and orientational ordering. In contrast, the retention indices for arenes increase with increasing temperature because the entropic cost of cavity formation is smaller for arenes than for comparable alkanes.

Thermally-treated clay as a stationary phase in liquid chromatography

Spray-dried, spherical synthetic hectorite particles have been thermally-treated at 500 degrees C for 16 h and used as adsorbent materials in reversed-phase liquid chromatography. The retention of a 22 mono and disubstituted aromatic compounds was evaluated to study the retention mechanisms on the clay mineral. The retention of solutes on the thermally-treated clays was markedly different than that measured on octadecylsilica (ODS) columns under identical conditions, but remarkably similar to retention characteristics of the same solutes on porous graphitic carbon columns. The clay columns exhibit an enhanced selectivity over the ODS column in separation of nitroaromatic positional isomers. Under identical mobile phase compositions, a selectivity, alpha, of 7.15 between ortho- and para-dinitrobenzene isomers was measured on the clay column compared to a alpha of 1.04 on the ODS column.

Comparison of retention of aromatic hydrocarbons with polar groups in binary reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography systems

The retention of aromatic hydrocarbons with polar groups has been correlated as log k1 versus log k2 for reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography systems with different binary aqueous mobile phases containing methanol, acetonitrile or tetrahydrofuran as modifiers. Distinct changes in separation selectivity have been observed between tetrahydrofuran and acetonitrile or methanol systems. Methanol and acetonitrile systems show lower diversity of separation selectivity. The changes in retention and selectivity of aromatic hydrocarbons with various polar groups between any two chromatographic systems with binary aqueous eluents (tetrahydrofuran vs. acetonitrile, tetrahydrofuran vs. methanol and methanol vs. acetonitrile) have been interpreted in terms of molecular interactions of the solute with especially one component of the stationary phase region, i.e. extracted modifier, and stationary phase ordering. The ordering of the stationary phase region caused by modifier type influences the chromatographic selectivity of solutes with different molecular shape.

Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography on porous copolymers of different chemical structure

The influence of chemical structure of porous polymers on the chromatographic properties of high-performance liquid chromatography columns was studied. Columns were packed with four different porous copolymers: di(methacryloyloxymethyl)naphthalene-divinylbenzene containing ester functional groups, 4,4'-bis(maleimido)diphenylmethane-divinylbenzene with imide groups, di(4,4'-dimethacrylphenyl)sulfone-divinylbenzene which contains sulphonyl groups, and styrenedivinylbenzene with any functional groups. Using the alkyl aryl ketone scale, the retention indices of five homologous series (alkylbenzenes, alkyl aryl ketones, N-alkylanilines, alkyl aryl ethers, alkylbenzoates) and column test compounds (toluene, nitrobenzene, p-cresol, 2-phenylethanol, N-methylaniline) were calculated. Their values were used for comparison of the selectivities of the studied polymeric packings.

Relationship between retention characteristics and physicochemical parameters of solutes on porous graphitized carbon column

The retention of 44 barbituric acid derivatives was determined on porous graphitized carbon (PGC) column using dioxane water mixtures as eluents. Linear correlations were calculated between the logarithm of the capacity factor and the dioxane concentration in the eluent. Free Wilson analysis combined with stepwise regression analysis was used to elucidate the role of individual substituents in the retention behaviour. Calculations indicated that the apolar substituents lie parallel to the surface of PGC surface increasing in this manner the retention and--as opposed to the retention characteristics of traditional reversed-phase supports--the position of substituents also exerts a marked influence on the retention.

Shift of the high-performance liquid chromatographic retention times of metabolites in relation to the original drug on an RP8 column with acidic mobile phase

The effect of the structural change in the metabolization of drugs on the HPLC retention time with an RP8 column with an acetonitrile-phosphate buffer (pH 2.3) as the mobile phase was investigated at model compound pairs of 29 functionalization reactions. A more or less typical region for T(M)=log(k'M/k'D) was found for each of these reactions (with k'M and k'D being the capacity factors of the metabolite and the drug, respectively), which can be explained by an increase or a decrease of the hydrophilic properties caused by the structural change. This effect is superimposed by an essential influence of the unchanged part of the molecule and in some cases by special intramolecular interactions like the hydrogen bond. Despite the more complicated structure of real drugs the results obtained at the model compound pairs were confirmed for most of the 55 metabolite/drug pairs. The practical use of the T(M) values as a support to distinguish between different metabolites in the HPLC-DAD analysis of intoxications is demonstrated with cases of poisoning with diphenhydramine, propafenone and methaqualone.