Comparative high-performance liquid chromatography enantioseparations on polysaccharide based chiral stationary phases prepared by coating totally porous and core–shell silica particles

This article reports comparative high-performance liquid chromatographic separations of enantiomers with chiral stationary phases (CSPs) prepared by coating cellulose tris(4-chloro-3-methylphenylcarbamate) on totally porous and on core–shell type silica of comparable particle diameter. Several interesting observations were made: (1) the selectivity of separation was higher on core–shell type CSP compared to totally porous CSP at comparable content of chiral selector (polysaccharide derivative); (2) much flatter dependence of plate height on the mobile phase flow rate was observed for columns packet with CSP prepared with core–shell silica compared to the ones packed with CSPs prepared with totally porous particles; (3) at low mobile phase flow rates core–shell CSP provided lower resolving ability compared to a commercially available CSP having four times higher content of chiral selector along with higher retention of chiral analytes. However, at high flow rates core–shell type CSP performed similarly or better than the commercial column in regards of plate count (N) and peak resolution (Rs) per column length and within a given total analysis time. The advantage of CSP prepared with core–shell silica is obvious from the viewpoint of plate numbers and resolution calculated per unit time (i.e. speed of analysis).

► Novel core–shell-based chiral stationary phases are proposed.
► Chiral stationary phases based on totally porous and core–shell silica are compared.
► The advantages of core–shell materials for fast separation of enantiomers are shown.