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The development of standard operation procedures for the manufacture of a n-octadecyl bonded spherical silica packing from partially condensed tetraethoxysilane as silica source is described. The synthesis comprises five intermediate products and six synthesis steps which were examined according to their reproducibility and robustness. The results led to the optimisation of the manufacturing process for a n-octadecyl bonded silica. Correlations were drawn between the dynamic viscosity of the poly(ethoxy)siloxane (PES), the synthesis parameters, the resulting pore structural properties and particle size distribution of the silicas. Validated procedures were developed to manufacture spherical porous ultra-pure silicas with a specific surface area of 350 m2 g−1±5% R.S.D., a specific pore volume of 1.0 ml g−1±3.7% R.S.D., an average pore diameter of 12.0 nm±0.5% R.S.D. and an average particle diameter of 5 μm. Results are presented on trial batches and the final master batch which were both used as packing materials in reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RP-LC) columns. The latter columns were certified and accepted as an HPLC column as reference material (BCR-722) by the European Commission, Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), Geel, Belgium. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In order to elucidate the role of the flow-through characteristics with regard to the column performance in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) native and n-octadecyl bonded monolithic silica rods and columns, respectively of 100mm length and 4.6mm ID with mesopores in the range between 10 and 25nm and macropores in the range between 0.7 and 6.0μm were examined by mercury intrusion/extrusion, scanning electron microscopy, image analysis and permeability. The obtained data of the flow-through pore sizes and porosity values as well as surface-to-volume ratio of the stationary phase skeleton enabled to predict their influence to the chromatographic separation efficiency. Our data demonstrate that mercury porosimetry is a reliable technique to obtain all the characteristic parameters of the flow-through pores of silica monoliths. An important result of our examination was that the surface-to-volume ratio of monolithic silica skeletons had more significant impact to the separation process, rather than the average flow-through pore sizes. We could also show the essential differences between the particulate and monolithic stationary phases based on theoretical computation. The results, obtained from other characterization methods also indicated the structural complexity of monolithic silica samples. Permeability of columns is a generally applicable parameter to characterize all chromatographic phases no matter the chemistry or format. The correlation coefficient obtained for mercury intrusion and permeability of water was 0.998, though our investigation revealed that the surface modification is more likely influencing the obtained results. Further, the assumption of the cylindrical morphology of flow-through pores is not relevant to the investigated monolithic silica columns. These results on the morphology of the flow-through pores and of the skeletons were confirmed by the image analysis as well. Our main finding is that the flow-through pore sizes are not relevant for the estimation of the chromatographic separation efficiency of monolithic silica columns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Small cyclic peptides have been employed to elucidate the performance of novel sorbents as stationary phases in capillary electrochromatography (CEC). In this paper chain length dependencies for ordinary liquid chromatographic sorbents are reported together with findings acquired on beads specifically designed to suit CEC. The latter, tailor-made, spherical, porous silica exhibits a distinguished surface modification to meet the criteria anticipated to enhance performance profiles in CEC. With well-characterised peptides resembling the analytes, probing of the CEC system in a systematic manner (predominantly via the organic modifier content of the background electrolyte (BE)) reveals insight into the complex interplay occurring in such analytical systems at the molecular and sub-molecular level in particular upon various modes of interaction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]