Zwitterionic Chiral Stationary Phases Research Articles

Increments to chiral recognition facilitating enantiomer separations of chiral acids, bases, and ampholytes using Cinchona‐based zwitterion exchanger chiral stationary phases

The intramolecular distances of anion and cation exchanger sites of zwitterionic chiral stationary phases represent potential tuning sites for enantiomer selectivity. In this contribution, we investigate the influence of alkanesulfonic acid chain length and flexibility on enantiomer separations of chiral acids, bases, and amphoteric molecules for six Cinchona alkaloid-based chiral stationary phases in comparison with structurally related anion and cation exchangers. Employing polar-organic elution conditions, we observed an intramolecular counterion effect for acidic analytes which led to reduced retention times but did not impair enantiomer selectivities. Retention of amphoteric analytes is based on simultaneous double ion pairing of their charged functional groups with the acidic and basic sites of the zwitterionic selectors. A chiral center in the vicinity of the strong cation exchanger site is vital for chiral separations of bases. Sterically demanding side chains are beneficial for separations of free amino acids. Enantioseparations of free (un-derivatized) peptides were particularly successful in stationary phases with straight-chain alkanesulfonic acid sites, pointing to a beneficial influence of more flexible moieties. In addition, we observed pseudo-enantiomeric behavior of quinine and quinidine-derived chiral stationary phases facilitating reversal of elution orders for all analytes.

Stationary phase-related investigations of quinine-based zwitterionic chiral stationary phases operated in anion-, cation-, and zwitterion-exchange modes

The concept of recently introduced Cinchona alkaloid-type zwitterionic chiral stationary phases (CSPs) is based on fusing key cation- and anion-exchange (CX, AX) moieties in one single low-molecular mass chiral selector (SO) with the resulting CSPs allowing enantiomer separations of a wide range of chiral ionizable analytes comprising acids, bases, and zwitterionic compounds. Herein, we report principal, systematic investigations of the ion-exchange-type retention mechanisms available with the novel zwitterionic CSPs in nonaqueous polar organic mode. Typical CX and AX processes, corresponding to the parent single ion exchangers, are confirmed also for zwitterionic CSPs. Also the mechanism leading to recognition and retention of zwitterions was found to be ion exchange mediated in a zwitterion-exchange (ZX) mode. In both AX and CX modes the additional ionizable group within the SO besides the site responsible for the respective ion-exchange process could be characterized as an intramolecular counterion (IMCI) that effectively participates in the ion-exchange equilibria and thus, contributes to solute elution. In the ZX mode both oppositely charged groups of the zwitterionic SO were found not only to be the sites for simultaneous ion pairing with the analyte but also functioned as IMCIs at the same time. The main practical consequences of the IMCI feature were significant reduction of the amounts and even elimination of acidic and basic additives required in the eluent systems to afford analyte elution while still providing faster analysis than the parent single ion-exchanger-type CSPs. The set of ten structurally different zwitterionic CSPs employed in this study facilitated the establishment of correlations between chromatographic behavior of the CSPs with particular SO elements, thereby supporting the understanding of the working principles of these novel packing materials on a molecular level.

Investigations of mobile phase contributions to enantioselective anion- and zwitterion-exchange modes on quinine-based zwitterionic chiral stationary phases

Novel chiral stationary phases (CSPs) based on zwitterionic Cinchona alkaloid-type low-molecular mass chiral selectors (SOs), as they have been reported recently, were investigated in HPLC towards effects on their chromatographic behavior by mobile phase composition. Mobile phase characteristics like acid-to-base ratio and type of acidic and basic additives as well as effect of type of bulk solvents in nonaqueous polar organic and aqueous reversed-phase (RP) eluent systems were varied in order to illustrate the variability and applicability of zwitterionic CSPs with regard to mobile phase aspects. Chiral SOs of the five zwitterionic CSPs investigated herein contained weak and strong cation-exchange (WCX, SCX) sites at C9- and C6′-positions of the Cinchona alkaloid scaffold which itself accommodated the weak anion-exchange (WAX) site. The study focused on zwitterion-exchange (ZX) operational mode and chiral amino acids as target analytes. Besides, also the anion-exchange (AX) mode for chiral N-blocked amino acid analytes was considered, because of the intramolecular counterion (IMCI) property available in AX mode. Overall, most general and successful conditions in ZX mode were found to be weakly acidic methanolic mobile phases. In aqueous eluents RP contributions to retention came into play but only at low organic modifier content because of the highly polar character of zwitterionic analytes. At higher acetonitrile content, HILIC-related retention phenomena were observed. When using weakly basic eluent system in AX mode remarkably fast enantiomer separations involving exclusion phenomena were possible with one enantiomer eluting before and the other after void volume.

Synergistic Effects on Enantioselectivity of Zwitterionic Chiral Stationary Phases for Separations of Chiral Acids, Bases, and Amino Acids by HPLC

In an attempt to overcome the limited applicability scope of earlier proposed Cinchona alkaloid-based chiral weak anion exchangers (WAX) and recently reported aminosulfonic acid-based chiral strong cation exchangers (SCX), which are conceptionally restricted to oppositely charged solutes, their individual chiral selector (SO) subunits have been fused in a combinatorial synthesis approach into single, now zwitterionic, chiral SO motifs. The corresponding zwitterionic ion-exchange-type chiral stationary phases (CSPs) in fact combined the applicability spectra of the parent chiral ion exchangers allowing for enantioseparations of chiral acids and amine-type solutes in liquid chromatography using polar organic mode with largely rivaling separation factors as compared to the parent WAX and SCX CSPs. Furthermore, the application spectrum could be remarkably expanded to various zwitterionic analytes such as alpha- and beta-amino acids and peptides. A set of structurally related yet different CSPs consisting of either a quinine or quinidine alkaloid moiety as anion-exchange subunit and various chiral or achiral amino acids as cation-exchange subunits enabled us to derive structure-enantioselectivity relationships, which clearly provided strong unequivocal evidence for synergistic effects of the two oppositely charged ion-exchange subunits being involved in molecular recognition of zwitterionic analytes by zwitterionic SOs driven by double ionic coordination.