A hyperbranched polyethylenimine functionalized stationary phase for hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography

Abstract

A hyperbranched stationary phase for hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) has been prepared by grafting polyethylenimine (PEI) onto silica gel (termed as PEI-Sil). Rich primary, secondary, and tertiary amino groups associated with PEI render its good hydrophility. More importantly, the hyperbranched structure of PEI molecule is greatly helpful in improving interaction with polar analytes. For several kinds of model polar compounds, including organic acids, nucleosides, nucleic acid bases, amino acids, cephalosporins, and non-reducing sugars, PEI-Sil demonstrated excellent separation performance in terms of running stability, reproducibility, and separation efficiency (e.g., plate count ~74,000/m). In addition, PEI-Sil also exhibited much better separation selectivity toward inorganic anions when operated in the mode of ion chromatography relative to a commercial amino propyl-bonded column.

Recent applications of retention modelling in liquid chromatography

“…Since the MM model is built by combining both the LSS and the ADS model, the retention data may also be fitted to these two models separately to find the dominant retention mechanism [43,98–100]. Many of the developed stationary phases for HILIC are based on a polymeric structure, such as a hyperbranched polyethylenimine stationary phase [101] and a poly(vinyl alcohol)‐cationic cellulose copolymer [102]. Other used polymer functionalized silica stationary phases for HILIC separations are based on polyglycerol [103,104], polyacrylamide [105], poly(vinyl alcohol) [106], and poly(glycidyl methacrylate‐divinylbenzene) [99].…”

Hyperbranched Polyglycerol Functionalized Silica Stationary Phase for Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography

“…Peng et al prepared a novel polyethylenimine (PEI) functionalized HILIC stationary phase through a "graft to" method. 32 The column showed excellent separation performance for polar analytes under the HILIC mode due to the hyperbranched structure of PEI. Exploring hyperbranched polymers for novel HILIC stationary phases is intriguing and significant for the development and application of HILIC.…”