Fabrication and evaluation of an organic monolithic column based upon the polymerisation of hexyl methacrylate with 1,6-hexanediol ethoxylate diacrylate for the separation of small molecules by capillary liquid chromatography

This paper describes the fabrication of a new porous monolith, prepared in 100 mu m i.d. capillaries by the co-polymerisation of hexyl methacrylate with 1,6-hexanediol ethoxylate diacrylate, poly (HMA-co-1,6 HEDA), in the presence of azobisisobutyronitrile, 1, 4-butanediol and 1-propanol were used as porogens for the monoliths; the monoliths were then used as a stationary phase for capillary liquid chromatography. Two cross linkers namely 1,6 HEDA and EDMA were utilised in order to investigate the effects of cross linker length on the separation efficiency of small molecules, and it was found that the efficiency of the separation improved tenfold when using the longer cross linker, 1,6 HEDA. This improvement is associated with the increase in number of methylene groups which resulted in an increased number of mesopores, less than 50 nm. The 1,6 HEDA based monolith showed a high porosity (90%) and no evidence of swelling or shrinking with the use of organic solvents. Moreover, the 1,6 HEDA monolith demonstrated high reproducibility for the separation of the retained compounds anisole and naphthalene; these showed retention time RSDs of 1.79% and 2.74% respectively. The fabricated monolith also demonstrated high selectivity for neutral non-polar molecules, weak acids, and basic molecules. The asymmetry factors for basic molecules (nortriptyline and amitriptyline) were 1.5 and 13 respectively, indicating slight tailing, which is often noticeable on silica based phases due to secondary interactions between basic moieties and the hydroxyl groups of the silica. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.