A novel triptycene-terminated polymer used as the gas chromatographic stationary phase towards organic acidic/basic analytes and isomers

Abstract

This work presents a novel strategy for engineering a GC stationary phase with high selectivity, inertness and thermal stability by introducing the 3D π-rich TP moieties to the terminals of a polar chain polymer. Herein, we provide the first example, i.e., a new TP-terminated polycaprolactone polymer (TPP) as the stationary phase for GC analyses. As demonstrated, the TPP column achieved distinctly improved inertness to fatty acids and aldehydes, and dramatically enhanced thermal stability (about 100 °C higher) over the PCL column. Also, the TPP column exhibited high resolving capability towards the positional isomers of phenols, anilines and alkylated/halobenzenes and showed good potential in detecting minor impurities in chemical products. Importantly, the proposed strategy is facile, feasible and generally applicable to analogous polymers.