Synthesis of polymeric monoliths via thiol-maleimide polymerization reaction for highly efficient chromatographic separation

- Thiol-maleimide click reaction was firstly adopted to prepare capillary monoliths.
- Ultra-high column efficiency (180,500 N/m) was acquired on poly(BMI-co-3SH).
- The tryptic digests of BSA and HeLa were positively identified in cLC-MS.

One-step thiol-maleimide polymerization reaction was firstly adopted for direct preparation of polymeric monoliths via alkaline-catalyzed reaction of 4,4′-bis(maleimidophenyl)methane (BMI) and trimethylolpropane tris(3-mercaptopropionate) (3SH)/pentaerythriol tetra(3-mercaptopropionate) (4SH) in the presence of a small amount of triethylamine (TEA). The polymerization could be performed within 3 h, which was faster than thermal-initiated free radical polymerization. Two kinds of monoliths, poly(BMI-co-3SH) (marked as I) and poly(BMI-co-4SH) (marked as II), were characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), attenuated total reflection Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP). Satisfactory chromatographic separation ability and column efficiency were gained for analysis of small molecular compounds such as alkylbenzenes, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (EPA 610) and phenols in reversed-phase capillary liquid chromatography (cLC). High column efficiency (180,500 N/m) for butylbenzene was acquired on poly(BMI-co-3SH) column I-2, which was higher than those on most reported polymeric monoliths. A retention-independent efficient performance of small molecules was obtained by plotting of plate height (H) of alkylbenzenes versus the linear velocity (u). A term values in van Deemter equation of I-2 (1.72-0.24 μm) and poly(BMI-co-4SH) column II-2 (5.28-4.14 μm) were smaller than those of traditional organic/hybrid monoliths. Finally, as a practical application, 53 and 2184 unique peptides from the tryptic digests of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and HeLa cell proteins were positively identified with poly(BMI-co-3SH) monolith in cLC-MS.