Preparation and evaluation of 2-methylimidazolium-functionalized silica as a mixed-mode stationary phase for hydrophilic interaction and anion-exchange chromatography

- A novel 2-methylimidazolium-functionalized silica stationary phase was prepared.
- The column exhibited good selectivity in separating polar compounds.
- The column showed excellent mixed-mode chromatographic performance.

In this paper, a novel 2-methylimidazolium-functionalized silica stationary phase was prepared and further used for hydrophilic interaction and anion-exchange mixed-mode chromatography. The stationary phase was characterized by elemental analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry. The chromatographic properties of this stationary phase were investigated by hydrophilic chromatography for the separation of nucleosides, nucleobases, water soluble vitamins, sulfonamides and saccharides, and ion chromatography for the separation of inorganic anions. The effect of acetonitrile content, salt concentration and pH values of the mobile phase on the retention of the stationary phases was also investigated. Compared with 1-methylimidazolium-functionalized silica stationary phase, this new stationary phase demonstrated similar or better separation selectivity. This new column demonstrated good performance and separation selectivity even better than a commercial hydrophilic column. Besides, 2-methylimidazolium-functionalized silica is possible to be modified again and used as a precursor to derivate some new stationary phases from the 3-position nitrogen.