Hydrogel Coating with Temperature Response Retention Behavior and Its Application in Selective Separation of Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

We reporte the double-layer hydrogel-coated mesoporous silica material as a new stationary phase for liquid chromatography. The method of combining physical coating and chemical coating was to apply hydrogel coating on the surface of silica, and finally, a new type of liquid chromatography stationary phase with in situ coating of the functional hydrogel on silica was obtained. This hydrogel-functionalized liquid chromatography stationary phase also exhibits a certain temperature responsiveness. Experimental results show that this temperature response is mainly due to changes in the hydrogen bonding between the stationary phase and the analyte at different temperatures in the column oven, which leads to changes in retention behavior. The hydrogel-coated mesoporous silica microspheres showed excellent selectivity for many polar analytes. An excellent column efficiency was obtained (139 000 plates/m for terephthalic acid) after optimization of chromatographic conditions. In addition to rapid separation of some analytes, this new hydrogel stationary phase also has certain superiority in chromatographic performance compared with other new excellent liquid chromatography stationary phases functioned by three-dimensional cross-linking systems. The important thing is that this strategy is relatively easy to prepare a new stationary phase with different properties.