Separation of Vitamin E Isomers Using Mesoporous SBA-15 as Stationary Phase by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Mesoporous SBA-15 silica particles were prepared in 1.6 M HCl with triblock copolymer Pluronic P123 (poly(ethyleneglycol)-block-poly(propyleneglycol)-block-poly(ethyleneglycol)) as the templating agent. Characterization shows that it has a highly ordered hexagonal mesoporous structure running along the same direction, extremely narrow pore size distribution (5.8 nm) and high surface areas (799 m2 g−1). The SBA-15 particles were successfully employed for the normal-phase chromatography separation of six Vitamin E isomers (mobile phase: n-hexane/ether (97/3, V/V); flow-rate: 2.0 mL min−1). The results show that α-, β-, γ-, δ- tocotrierols and α-, β- tocotrienols are base-line separated.