Dendritic core-shell silica spheres with large pore size for separation of biomolecules

Monodispersed core-shell silica spheres with fibrous shell structure and tunable pore size were prepared by using a one-pot oil-water biphase method. The pore size could be tuned from 7 nm to 37 nm by using organic solvents with different polarities as oil phase. The spheres synthesized by using benzene as organic solvent had the maximum pore size of 37 nm and possessed a surface area of 61 m2 g−1. The obtained wide pore core-shell silica spheres were applied for rapidly separating small molecules, peptides, small proteins, and large proteins with molecular weight up to 200 kDa. Since the pore size of the core-shell silica spheres was sufficiently large for the free access of all the solutes, sharp and symmetric peaks were obtained. The separation performance was as high as 264,531 plates m−1 for fluorene. The great efficient separation demonstrates that the wide pore core-shell silica spheres have a great potential for rapid analysis of both small and large solutes with high performance liquid chromatography.