The combined use of chiral ionic liquids (ILs) and chiral selectors in capillary electrophoresis (CE) to establish a synergistic system has proven to be an effective approach for enantioseparation. In this article, tetramethylammonium-L-arginine, a kind of amino acid chiral IL, was applied to investigate its potential synergistic effect with maltodextrin in CE enantioseparation. The established maltodextrin-based synergistic system showed markedly improved enantioseparations compared with the single maltodextrin system. Parameters such as the chiral IL concentration, maltodextrin concentration, buffer pH, applied voltage, and capillary temperature were optimized. Satisfactory enantioseparation of the five studied drugs, including nefopam, duloxetine, ketoconazole, cetirizine, and citalopram was achieved in 50 mM Tris-H3 PO4 buffer solution (pH 3.0) containing 7.0% (m/v) maltodextrin and 60 mM tetramethylammonium-L-arginine. In addition, the chiral configuration of tetramethylammonium-L-arginine was also investigated to demonstrate the existence of a synergistic effect between chiral ILs and maltodextrin.
Keywords: capillary electrophoresis; chiral ionic liquids; enantioseparation; maltodextrin; synergistic system.
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