A chiral multi-shelled mesoporous carbon nanospheres used for high-resolution gas chromatography separations

Abstract

Herein, a chiral multishelled mesoporous carbon nanospheres (MCNs) with unique spiral multishelled hollow mesoporous chiral structure is synthesized; the MCNs can be used as stationary phases for high-resolution gas chromatography (GC) and have good separation capacity. The successful preparation of MCNs is verified by a variety of characterizations. In addition, the MCNs-coated capillary column shows excellent separation performance for n-alkanes, n-alcohols, aromatic compounds, and esters, and it has a faster analysis time than the HP-5 commercial capillary column. The chromatography separation performance for various isomers and racemates of the MCNs stationary phase was evaluated, and it showed good separation capability for amino acid derivatives. The MCNs-coated capillary column has been demonstrated to present good reproducibility and stability. In summary, all of the chromatography experiments in this work indicate that this new stationary phase of the MCNs has good application potential for GC capillary separation.

Keywords: Chiral chromatography separation; Chiral multi-shelled mesoporous carbon nanospheres; Chiral stationary phase; Gas chromatography; MCNs-coated capillary column.