A chiral porous organic cage for molecular recognition using gas chromatography

•A novel capillary column was fabricated using chiral porous organic cage (CC9) as stationary phase in GC.•The capillary column exhibited excellent enantioseparation for various racemates.•The capillary column has good complementarity to β-DEX 120 column and CC3-R column for enantioseparation.•Positional isomers were also efficiently separated on the capillary column.

Molecular organic cages as shape-persistent organic molecules with permanent and accessible cavities have attracted a lot of interest because of their importance as host-guest systems. Herein, we report a chiral porous organic cage (POC) CC9 diluted with a polysiloxane OV-1701 to fabricate a CC9-coated capillary column, which was used for the high-resolution gas chromatographic separation of organic compounds, including positional isomers and racemates. On the CC9-coated capillary column, a large number of racemic compounds such as chiral alcohols, esters, ethers and epoxides can be resolved without derivatization. By comparing the chiral recognition ability of the CC9-coated column with the commercially available β-DEX 120 column and the POC CC3-R coated column recently reported by our group, the CC9-coated column offered good resolution during the separation of some racemates, that were not separated using the β-DEX 120 column or POC CC3-R coated column. Therefore, the CC9-coated column can be complementary to the β-DEX 120 column and CC3-R coated column. The results indicated that the CC9-coated column exhibited great potential for application in the separation of positional isomers and enantiomers with great selectivity, high resolution and good reproducibility.

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