Potential and current limitations of superficially porous silica as a carrier for polysaccharide-based chiral selectors in separation of enantiomers in high-performance liquid chromatography.

In this study superficially porous silica particles with a nominal pore size of 450 Å and average particle size of 2.6 micrometers was compared to fully porous silica particles with nominal particle size 3 micrometers and nominal pore size 1000 A as carriers for a polysaccharide based chiral selector for the separation of enantiomers in high-performance liquid chromatography. In addition, the effects of chiral selector loading onto the silica support and of column internal dimeter in the case of both, superficially porous and totally porous silica, as well as of the pore size of superficially porous silica on column performance were studied.

Further proof to the utility of polysaccharide-based chiral selectors in combination with superficially porous silica particles as effective chiral stationary phases for separation of enantiomers in high-performance liquid chromatography.

The first ever report on the preparation of chiral stationary phases (CSP) based on superficially porous silica (SPS) particles for the separation of enantiomers in HPLC demonstrated clear advantages of such materials. Higher enantioselectivity at the comparable content of a chiral selector, limited dependence of plate height on the mobile phase flow rate and higher plate numbers and resolution calculated per unit time (i.e.