Intergroup cross-comparison for the evaluation of data-interchangeability from various chromatographic tests

• Test parameters of Tanaka and of Snyder showed surprisingly a high correlation.
• USP test is related to Tanaka and Snyder only in terms of hydrophobic characters.
• Some differences in the correlation are shown between aromatic and alkyl phases.
• The hydrophobic-subtraction model is extended to describe calixarene-bonded phases.

The recently dramatic increase in the available choices of reversed-phase columns could be an advantage of this mode of separation. However, due to the insufficiency of available information in terms of the exact functionality of these phases and the similarities and differences between these newly introduced and conventional reversed-phase columns, it is now somehow problematic to determine which could be the best column for a given analytical problem. There is no single column that will give us a good separation for all applications. As a result, there have been several attempts to develop testing strategies to characterize column chemistries. In this study three of the most widely used and acceptable approaches for the characterization of reversed-phase columns, which are Tanaka, United States Pharmacopeia (USP), and Snyder–Dolan, are systemically applied to investigate the chromatographic properties of calixarene- and resorcinarene-bonded stationary phases, polar-embedded and polar-endcapped stationary phases, phenyl and ether-linked phenyl with the presence of conventional alkyl-bonded phases (octyl- and octadecylsilane). Although all column classification systems aim to evaluate “more or less” the same characteristics, each system uses different test mixtures in different chromatographic conditions. It is therefore very important to evaluate the similarities and differences in the resulted “column parameters” and the possible interchangeability of them. The results of this comparative study show that the used parameters of Tanaka and of Snyder–Dolan have in many cases a good to very good correlation. The USP approach, which is based on single run, is related to Tanaka and Snyder–Dolan only in terms of hydrophobic characters, and no relation could establish in the other parameters. The hydrophobic-subtraction model could be extended to describe the ligand–solute interactions of calixarene- and resorcinarene-bonded stationary phases, which are belonging to reversed phase material. However they show, depending on the analytes, some additional interactions, since their steric, polar and ionic properties are different compared to those of conventional alkyl-bonded phases.