Preparation of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane-based hybrid monolith by ring-opening polymerization and post-functionalization via thiol-ene click reaction

• A facile approach was successfully developed to prepare a POSS-based hybrid monolith possessing disulfide bonds.
• Functionalization of POSS-based hybrid monolith was performed with methylacrylate via thiol-ene reaction at room temperature.
• The column efficiency was obviously enhanced after SMA-modification of hybrid monolithic column.
• A 1-m-long column of 75 μm i.d. was prepared and exhibited the highest column efficiency of ∼70,000 plates.

A polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) hybrid monolith was simply prepared by using octaglycidyldimethylsilyl POSS (POSS-epoxy) and cystamine dihydrochloride as monomers via ring-opening polymerization. The effects of composition of prepolymerization solution and polycondensation temperature on the morphology and permeability of monolithic column were investigated in detail. The obtained POSS hybrid monolithic column showed 3D skeleton morphology and exhibited high column efficiency of ∼71,000 plates per meter in reversed-phase mechanism. Owing to this POSS hybrid monolith essentially possessing a great number of disulfide bonds, the monolith surface would expose thiol groups after reduction with dithiothreitol (DTT), which supplied active sites to functionalize with various alkene monomers via thiol-ene click reaction. The results indicated that the reduction with DTT could not destroy the 3D skeleton of hybrid monolith. Both stearyl methylacrylate (SMA) and benzyl methacrylate (BMA) were selected to functionalize the hybrid monolithic columns for reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC), while [2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]-dimethyl-(3-sulfopropyl)-ammonium hydroxide (MSA) was used to modify the hybrid monolithic column in hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC). These modified hybrid monolithic columns could be successfully applied for separation of small molecules with high efficiency. It is demonstrated that thiol-ene click reaction supplies a facile way to introduce various functional groups to the hybrid monolith possessing thiol groups. Furthermore, due to good permeability of the resulting hybrid monoliths, we also prepared long hybrid monolithic columns in narrow-bore capillaries. The highest column efficiency reached to ∼70,000 plates using a 1-m-long column of 75 μm i.d. with a peak capacity of 147 for isocratic chromatography, indicating potential application in separation and analysis of complex biosamples.