Comparison of microstructures of microemulsion and swollen micelle in electrokinetic chromatography

Recently, 1-butanol modified MEKC was proven to be similar to MEEKC in separation performance. In the present work, typical microemulsion containing 0.8% n-octane/3.3% SDS/6.6% 1-butanol/20 mM borax buffer and corresponding swollen micelle without n-octane were used to compare their microdroplet structures including hydrodynamic radius, electrokinetic potential ζ and charge density at the hydrodynamic shear surface, as well as microenvironment polarity in the interior of the microdroplets. Three kinds of corticosteroids were separated with MEEKC and 1-butanol modified MEKC to assess their separation performances. The experiment results showed that both microstructure and separation performance in microemulsion and in swollen micelle systems were alike, no matter whether oil phase n-octane was present. The environment polarity in the core of swollen micelle was slightly higher than in the microemulsions, and both of them were higher than in n-octane medium. Furthermore, the influences of SDS and 1-butanol concentration on microstructures were measured in details. Increasing the amount of SDS, hydrodynamic radius decreased in microemulsion but increased in swollen micelle. On the contrary, ζ and shear surface charge density changed in the reverse trends. With increment of 1-butanol concentration, the hydrodynamic radius increased dramatically in microemulsions, whereas decreased slightly in swollen micelle. Even though using n-octane as oil core was not a key factor, microemulsions and swollen micelle as pseudostationary phase in EKC should not be exactly the same.