In situ fabrication of 3D COF-300 in a capillary for separation of aromatic compounds by open-tubular capillary electrochromatography

Two-dimensional (2D) COFs have been successfully applied for various applications, such as capillary electrochromatography (CEC). Compared with 2D COFs, three-dimensional (3D) COFs have higher surface area and lower density, which should have superior potential as the separation medium in CEC. However, the 3D COFs on the inner wall of capillary is hard to fabricate in situ. Up to date, the application of 3D COFs in open-tubular capillary electrochromatography (OT-CEC) is still considered a challenge. For the first time the COF-300-coated capillary was prepared by in situ growth (COF-300 was made from terephthalaldehyde and tetra-(4-anilyl)-methane) on OT-CEC. Benzene, methylbenzene, styrene, ethylbenzene, naphthalene, 1-methylnaphthalene, and propylbenzene were used to evaluate the performance of the COF-300-coated capillary by OT-CEC. For three consecutive runs, the intraday relative standard deviations (RSDs) of migration time and peak areas were 0.1-0.4% and 2.5-8.3%, respectively. The interday RSDs of migration time and peak areas were 0.2-0.5% and 1.0-10.8%, respectively. Five groups of aromatic co mpounds were used to further study the separation mechanism, which indicated that hydrophobic interaction and size selection interaction are the main factors. It should be noted that the COF-300-coated capillary can be used for more than 140 runs with no observable changes of the separation efficiency. Graphical abstract The 3D COF-300-coated capillary was prepared by in situ growth for OT-CEC. Six groups of aromatic compounds were separated by 3D COF-300-coated capillary. Size selection and hydrophobic interaction affect the migration time of analytes.