Unusual van Deemter plots of optical isomers on a chiral brush-type liquid chromatography column

Abstract

Unusual dynamic behavior of the enantiomers of 9-bromo-11b-(tert-butyl)-2,3,6,11b-tetrahydrooxazolo[3′,2′:1,5]pyrrolo[3,4-b]quinoline-5,11-dione (I) was observed on a Nautilus-R column packed with silica grafted with antibiotic ristocetin. It consisted in (i) antibatic behavior of the van Deemter plots of the enantiomers and (ii) high and strongly enantiomer dependent values of the A- and B-terms of the van Deemter equation. Although rare, such a pattern has been found earlier in chiral chromatography, with all reported cases limited to brush-type chiral stationary phases. Adsorption dynamics in this system was studied by means of the moment method and the peak parking technique; hydrodynamic properties of the column were explored by using unretained tracers. It was shown that the peculiar shape of the van Deemter curves for the enantiomers of I is conditioned by imperfect packing of the stationary phase, which result in high transcolumn eddy dispersion, and by slow adsorption/desorption kinetics. It was proven that the whole void volume of the column available to an eluent is not accessible to the studied analyte because it cannot penetrate the space between neighboring grafted ligands. Its mass transfer in pores is also affected by the fact that the stagnant layer of the binary water-acetonitrile mobile phase differs in composition from the bulk liquid due to preferential adsorption of water that influences the apparent molecular diffusivity of solutes. An effect of the structures of analyte and chiral selector on the adsorption kinetics is also briefly discussed.