Amine Gradient Stationary Phases on In-House Built Monolithic Columns for Liquid Chromatography

Stationary phase gradients on monolithic silica columns have been successfully and reproducibly prepared and characterized with comparisons made to uniformly modified stationary phases. Stationary phase gradients hold great potential for use in liquid chromatography (LC), both in terms of simplifying analysis as well as providing novel selectivity. In this work, we demonstrate the creation of a continuous stationary phase gradient on in-house synthesized monolithic columns by infusing an aminoalkoxysilane solution through the silica monoliths via controlled rate infusion. The presence of amine and its distribution along the length of gradient and uniformly modified columns were assessed via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). XPS showed a clear gradient in surface coverage along the length of the column for the gradient stationary phases while a near uniform distribution on the uniformly modified stationary phases. To demonstrate the application of these gradient stationary phases, the separations of both nucleobases and weak acids/weak bases on these gradient stationary phases have been compared to uniformly modified and unmodified silica columns. Of particular note, the retention characteristics of 11 gradient columns, 5 uniformly modified columns, and 5 unmodified columns have been tested to establish the reproducibility of the synthetic procedures. Standard deviations of the retention factors were in the range from 0.06 to 0.5, depending on the analyte species. We show that selectivity is achieved with the stationary phase gradients that are significantly different from either uniformly modified amine or unmodified columns. These results indicate the significant promise of this strategy for creating novel stationary phases for LC.