Simultaneous determination of inorganic anions and cations by supercritical fluid chromatography using evaporative light scattering detection

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is commonly used for the analysis of non-polar compounds, but remains poorly explored for the separation of polar and ionized molecules. In this paper, SFC has been investigated for the separation of 14 inorganic ions sampled in aqueous solutions. Four polar stationary phases were first screened using CO2-methanol-based mobile phases containing water or different acidic or basic additives, in order to select the most efficient conditions for the simultaneous retention of inorganic cations and anions and to favor their detection using evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD). Orthogonal selectivity was obtained depending on the stationary phase used: whereas anions are less retained on HILIC stationary phase, 2-ethylpyridine (2-EP) stationary phase exhibits strong interaction for anions. Best results were obtained under gradient elution mode using a 2-EP stationary phase and by adding 0.2% triethylamine in the CO2-methanol-based mobile phase. The composition of the injection solvent was also investigated. The results showed that a methanolic sample containing a percentage of water not exceeding 20% does not affect the analytical performances obtained on 2-EP. Moreover, the presence of triethylamine in the injection solvent contributes to eliminate peaks shoulders. Among the 14 inorganic ions tested, three cations (Li+, Ca2+ and Mg2+) and five anions (Cl−, Br−, NO3−, I−, SCN−) were totally resolved in 15 min. NO3− and NO2− still coeluted in the final optimized conditions. The other investigated ions were either strongly retained on the stationary phase or not detected by the ELSD.