Development of chiral stationary phases consisting of low-molecular-weight cellulose derivatives covalently bonded to silica gel

Abstract

We prepared chiral supports whose chiral stationary phase (CSP), consisting of a low-molecular-weight cellulose derivative (degree ofpolymerization: 15), is covalently bonded to silica gel. The cellulose used asthe base material of the CSP was pre-hydrolysed with phosphoric acid before thecoupling reaction to unite a reducing terminal in the cellulose and anaminopropyl group on the surface of silanized silica. After substitutinghydroxyl groups in cellulose by using 3,5-dichlorophenyl isocyanate or phenylisocyanate, we tested the CSP thus obtained for its performance in chiralrecognition and found a wide range of chiral discrimination ability. We alsoconfirmed that an elution using ‘strong’ solvents as a mobile phasecould be achieved, which is difficult for the coated-type CSPs because themobile phase may dissolve the CSP. However, more enantiomeric mixtures showedlarger selectivity factors (α) when eluted on the coated-type CSPs thanonthe covalently bonded CSPs. A coated-type CSP consisting of thelow-molecular-weight cellulose phenylcarbamate, prepared as a control CSPsample, showed comparable performance with the commercial coated-type column(CHIRALCEL® OC), so the slightly poorer performance ofthe chemically bonded CSPs may be explained by the difficulty of the polymerconsisting of the CSPs in taking an optimal supermolecular structure requiredfor chiral recognition due to the fixation to the silica gel. The lowdegreeof polymerization may have an additional effect.