The use of ammonium hydroxide as an additive in supercritical fluid chromatography for achiral and chiral separations and purifications of small, basic medicinal molecules

This study describes using 0.1% of a 28–30% ammonium hydroxide solution as an additive to alcohol modifiers in SFC to improve chromatographic peak shapes for basic molecules. Ammonium hydroxide's high volatility leaves no residual additive in the purified sample unlike classical additives in preparative chromatography such as diethylamine and triethylamine. We demonstrate that the silica support is stable despite having ammonium hydroxide in the modifier by running a durability study for over 350 h (105 L of solvent, 105,000 column volumes) on an analytical Chiralcel OJ column and a second study for 30 h (7.2 L, 14,400 column volumes) on an analytical Lux Cellulose-1 column. The peak shape of small, basic molecules is greatly improved with the use of ammonium hydroxide and this improvement is very similar to those having 0.1% diethylamine as a mobile phase additive. Electrospray ionization is also enhanced with the presence of ammonium hydroxide compared with that of diethylamine. We have found that the age of the 28–30% bottle of ammonium hydroxide solution can have significant effects on the chromatography and we describe how this can be overcome. Finally, we analyzed 23 racemic and basic compounds on six different chiral stationary phases and found there to be very little chiral selectivity difference between ammonium hydroxide and diethylamine, triethylamine, ethanolamine and isopropylamine.

► NH4OH does not degrade the silica support under SFC conditions.
► NH4OH evaporates leaving no residual additive in a purified fraction.
► NH4OH provides similar chromatography as compared to diethylamine.
► NH4OH greatly enhances electrospray ionization as compared to diethylamine.
► There is little to no chiral selectivity difference between NH4OH and other additives, when methanol is used as a co-solvent.