Influence of pressure on the retention of resorcinarene-based cavitands.

The thermodynamics of the retention mechanism of resorcinarene-based cavitands in RPLC as well as the nature of the binding sites have been studied recently. In the present study, the influence of pressure on the retention of the cyclic tetramers on alkylsilyl and polar-embedded C8 and C18 stationary phases is investigated using aqueous methanol mobile phase. The pressure effect for cavity-shaped molecules has been scarcely studied so far. We observed that the retention factors of the analytes increased with the increase of the average column pressure (1-400 bar) when using restricting capillary tubes. The calculated molar volume changes were negative, between -ΔVm = 5-19 mL/mol on all types of stationary phases. Comparing the different stationary phases, we found that the molar volume changes for both the apolar and more polar analytes were twice larger on the Hypersil BDS (base deactivated silica) than on the XTerra columns and they were independent of the length of the alkyl chains of the stationary phases.

Investigation of the temperature dependence of water adsorption on silica-based stationary phases in hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography.

In the present work, the adsorption of water was investigated in aqueous normal-phase liquid chromatography on Cogent Silica C and Cogent Phenyl hydride stationary phases at different temperatures by frontal analysis - using coulometric Karl Fischer titration - to compare the temperature dependence of adsorption of water from aqueous acetonitrile. The Cogent Silica-C and Cogent Phenyl Hydride columns have a silicon hydride surface (silica hydride) with less than 2% free silanol group; therefore, they do not have a strong association with water. The adsorption behavior of water on the mentioned stationary phases was modeled by Langmuir isotherm. The preferentially adsorbed water was expressed in terms of a hypothetical monomolecular water layer equivalent in the inner pores. The uptake of water slightly depends on the temperature. The adsorbed water may fill four to eight percent of the pore volume over the studied temperature range, which approximately corresponds to the equivalent of 0.24-0.68 water layer coverage of the adsorbent surface. The phenyl hydride stationary phase shows decreased water uptake in comparison to the Silica C stationary phase.

Investigation of retention mechanism of resorcinarene based cavitands by linear and nonlinear chromatography.

Cavitands are cavity-shaped cyclic oligomers and they can create host-guest interactions with various analytes, therefore they have applications in supramolecular chemistry, nanoscale reactions, chromatographic separations, drug encapsulation and delivery, biochemistry. The investigation of the chromatographic behavior of large molecules, such as resorcinarenes and cavitands is meager up to now. To understand the retention of resorcinarenes and cavitands in liquid chromatography, we studied their retention mechanism by the thermodynamic parameters calculated from the van't Hoff equation and by generation of an adsorption isotherm, which can describe the adsorption of the solute on the stationary phase surface. We compared the thermodynamics of the retention for cyclic oligomers in acetonitrile:water and methanol:water mobile phases. Furthermore, we determined the equilibrium adsorption isotherm by inverse method and we made an error analysis of the estimation obtained with the inverse method to ascertain the validity of the obtained isotherm parameters over a broader concentration range.

Retention behavior of resorcinarene-based cavitands on C8 and C18 stationary phases.

The understanding of the retention behavior of large molecules is an area of interest in liquid chromatography. Resorcinarene-based cavitands are cavity-shaped cyclic oligomers that can create host-guest interactions. We have investigated the chromatographic behavior of two types of cyclic tetramers as analytes in high-performance liquid chromatography. The experiments were performed at four different temperatures (15, 25, 35, 45°C) on two types of reversed stationary phases (C8 and C18 ) from two different manufacturers. We have found a huge difference between the retention of resorcinarenes and cavitands. In some cases, the retention factor of cavitands was even a hundred times larger than the retention factor of resorcinarenes. The retention of methylated derivates was two to four times larger compared to that of demethylated compounds on every column. The opposite retention behavior of the resorcinarenes and cavitands on the two types of stationary phases showed well the difference of the selectivity of the XTerra and BDS Hypersil columns. The retention mechanism was studied by the thermodynamic parameters calculated from the van't Hoff equation.