Strong cation exchange monoliths for HPLC by Reactive Gelation

Abstract

Polymeric monolithic stationary phases for HPLC can be produced by Reactive Gelation. Unlike the conventional method of using porogens, such novel process consists of a number of separate steps, thus enabling a better control of the quality of the final material. A suspension of polymer nanoparticles in water is produced and subsequently swollen with hydrophobic monomers. The particles are then destabilised (usually by salt addition) to make them aggregate into a large percolating structure, the so-called monolith. Finally, the added monomer can then be polymerised to harden the structure. In this work, a polystyrene latex is used as the base material and functionalised by introduction of epoxide groups on the surface and subsequent reaction to sulphonic acid groups, yielding a SO3(-) density of 0.7 mmol/g dry material. Morphological investigations show 54% porosity made of 300 nm large pores. Van Deemter measurements of a large protein show no practical influence of diffusion limitations on the plate number. Finally, a preliminary separation of a test protein mixture is shown, demonstrating the potential of using ion-exchange chromatography on Reactive Gelation monoliths.

Macroporous Polymer–Protein Hybrid Materials for Antibody Purification by Combination of Reactive Gelation and Click-Chemistry

“…As schematically shown in Figure 1 (first four boxes), the reactive gelation process contains four main steps: the synthesis of polymeric core-shell nanoparticles, their swelling with cross-linker and lipophilic initiator, high-shear aggregation to form porous microclusters, and the post-polymerization step to harden the obtained fractal materials. Each step is fully separated from the others, and allows better control of the final product properties as discussed earlier [26,27,28,29,30,31]. By exploiting the concept of copper-mediated alkyne-azide cycloaddition (CuAAC), the produced azide-containing polymers can readily be modified chemically yielding activated polymer templates for protein immobilization upon introducing NHS-ester or epoxides to the surface (Figure 1, last box).…”

Polyacrylonitrile Nanoparticle‐Derived Hierarchical Structure for CO2 Capture

“…The gels produced by controlled destabilization are porous and the average pore size is on the order of the primary particle size. Such large pores can be very beneficial in liquid‐phase applications to reduce the mass transport limitations; however, their contribution is much less relevant in gas‐phase applications, where the diffusion coefficients are large enough to ensure effective interparticle transport even with smaller pores. On the other hand, the developed pores are not sufficient to provide large enough adsorption capacity, i.e., high specific surface.…”

Cholesterol‐imprinted macroporous monoliths: Preparation and characterization

“…HETP values grow for packed columns with a linear flow velocity increase . In turn, in macroporous monoliths under the domination of convective mechanism of mass transfer this parameter is kept constant or even decreased . Earlier, Huang et al.…”