Evaluation of the silanol-suppressing potency of ionic liquids

Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the use of ionic liquids for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis. In the present study, the silanol-suppressing potency of ionic liquids was evaluated by HPLC using the two-retention site model proposed previously by Nahum and Horvath (J. Chromatogr. 1981, 203, 53-63). The binding constant, K-A, in that approach has been demonstrated to reliably reflect the ability of the ionic liquids to block the silanols of the silica support material of the stationary phase. The determinations were carried out for ionic liquids of the 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium group with the use of a series of basic drugs as the test analytes. Comparison of ionic liquids with standard mobile phase additives such as triethylamine showed the former to possess advantages as silanol suppressors in HPLC. The main advantage of the method is that it provides a simple and fast determination of the silanol complex stability, which allowed comparison of the suppressing efficiency of several ionic liquids.