Fabrication of powdery polymer aerogel as the stationary phase for high-resolution gas chromatographic separation.

Novel powdery polymer aerogel (PPA) prepared via the (micro)emulsion polymerization and the following hyper crosslinking reaction was fabricated as stationary phase of capillary column for the first time. Due to its powdery morphology, unique 3D nano-network structure, high surface area and good thermostability, the PPA-coated capillary column demonstrated high-resolution chromatographic separation towards nonpolar and weakly polar organic compounds, including benzene series, n-alkanes, ketone mixtures and trichlorobenzenes. Moreover, the reproducibility, quantitative analysis ability and thermostability of PPA-coated capillary column were also evaluated. The relative standard deviations for three replicate determinations of selected analytes were 0.02-0.11%, 0.12-0.26% and 1.2-3.6% for run-to-run, day-to-day and column-to-column analyses, respectively. The PPA demonstrated good thermostability, and the PPA-coated capillary column was proved to be heat-resistant (270 °C). The results of this study show PPA is an excellent candidate to be employed as stationary phase for gas chromatography capillary.

Rapid separation of non-polar and weakly polar analytes with metal-organic framework MAF-5 coated capillary column.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted widespread attention due to their unique characters such as high surface area, high thermal and chemical stability, diverse structure topology and tunable pore size. The study first exploited a porous metal organic framework MAF-5 ([Zn[(eim)2], Heim=2-ethylimidazole) as stationary phase for gas chromatography by a novel dynamic coating method. The column efficiency of the 184 silicone@MAF-5 capillary column was up to 9045 plates m(-1) for benzene. The column is very promising for the rapid separation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). And the column showed good reproducibility, retention time, peak area, high resolution, and a wide linear range. The determined thermodynamic parameters and chromatographic retention of all probe molecules on the 184 silicone@MAF-5 column showed the separation of analytes is a complex balance of thermodynamic and kinetic factors.

Exploitation of a microporous organic polymer as a stationary phase for capillary gas chromatography.

Microporous organic polymers (MOPs) have emerged as a new class of functional porous materials with unique characteristics and potential uses in diverse areas. However, the field of MOPs for gas chromatographic (GC) separations has not been well explored. Herein, a MOP namely KAPs-1 was dynamic coated onto a capillary column for the first time. The fabricated column exhibited a nonpolar nature and the column efficiency for n-dodecane was up to 7769 plates m(-1). The KAPs-1 coated column showed high GC separation performance for a series of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including the challenging ethylbenzene and xylene isomers, which could not be resolved at baseline on the commercial 5% phenyl polysiloxane stationary phase. Moreover, the relative standard deviations for five replicate determinations of the studied analytes were 0.0-0.6%, 0.9-3.2%, 1.1-5.9%, 0.8-3.7% for retention time, peak area, peak height and peak width, respectively. To investigate the interaction between some analytes and the stationary phase, thermodynamic and kinetic parameters were also evaluated. The results of this study show it is very promising to utilize MOPs as stationary phases for capillary GC.