The separation of polyethylene glycols and maleimide-substituted polyethylene glycol derivatives based on the number of maleimide end-groups under critical liquid chromatography conditions has been investigated on a reversed-phase column. The critical solvent compositions for nonfunctional polyethylene glycols and bifunctional maleimide-substituted polyethylene glycols were determined to be identical at about 40% acetonitrile in water on a reversed-phase octadecyl carbon chain-bonded silica column using mixtures of acetonitrile and water of varying composition as the mobile phase at 25°C. The maleimide-functionalized polyethylene glycols were successfully separated according to maleimide functionality (with zero, one, two, or three maleimide end-groups, respectively) under the critical isocratic elution conditions without obvious effect of molar mass. The separation was mainly due to the hydrophobic interaction between the maleimide end-groups and the column packing. Off-line matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry was used to identify the repeating units and, especially, the end-groups of the maleimide-substituted polyethylene glycols. Liquid chromatography analysis at critical conditions could provide useful information to optimize the synthesis of functional polyethylene glycols. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the baseline separation of maleimide-functionalized polyethylene glycols based on the functionality independent of the molar mass without derivatization by isocratic elution.

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Baseline separation and characterization of benzaldehyde-substituted PEGs based on end-group functionality achieved by LCCC and confirmed by off-line MALDI-TOF-MS.