Preparation of particle-fixed silica monoliths used in capillary electrochromatography

Silica-particle-supported zwitterionic polymer monolith for microcolumn liquid chromatography

A silica-particle-supported zwitterionic polymeric monolithic column, shortened as supported column (S-column), was prepared by the in situ polymerization of methacrylic acid, ethylene dimethacrylate, and 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate in the presence of a ternary porogenic solvent containing water, methanol, and cyclohexanol in a 250 μm id fused-silica capillary prepacked with 5 μm bare silica particles. In the S-column, a thin layer of the polymers was formed around the silica particles in the form of nanoglobules, leaving the interstitial spaces between the particles free for liquid flow. The effects of the preparation conditions on the morphology of the monolith were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and backpressure measurements. The selected volumetric ratio of porogens, monomer concentration, polymerization time, and temperature are 1:1:8 (water/methanol/cyclohexanol), 25% v/v, 5 h, and 60°C, respectively. The S-column was evaluated by comparison with its conventional organic counterpart in terms of morphology, mechanical stability, permeability, swelling-shrinking behavior, capacity, and efficiency. The results demonstrate that the S-column is superior to its counterpart in all the terms with the exception of permeability. The above merits and zwitterionic property of the S-column were further confirmed by separate separations of four inorganic anions and three organic cations.

Intact-protein trapping columns for proteomic analysis in capillary high-performance liquid chromatography

A new type of monolithic trapping columns with high mechanical strength was prepared by thin-layer sol-gel coating method and applied to trapping intact proteins for on-line capillary liquid chromatography. Monolithic trapping columns were fabricated by entrapping C8 reversed-phase particles into the capillary columns through a sol-gel network, which was formed by hydrolysis and polycondensation of methyltriethoxysilane. Hundreds times of trapping/untrapping for intact proteins were carried out. The trapping columns showed long-term stability up to 300 bar. Recovery, loading capacity and reproducibility of trapping columns were evaluated using four proteins. The recovery of four protein mixtures for the C8 monolithic trapping columns was 99.3% on average. The loading capacity of 5 mm × 320 μm i.d. C8 trapping columns for the protein mixtures was 30 μg. Day-to-day relative standard deviation (RSD) values for recoveries of protein mixtures on the same C8 trapping column ranged from 2.34 to 5.87%, column-to-column RSD values were from 3.01 to 6.81%. The C8 trapping columns were used to trap normal mouse liver intact proteins in a capillary liquid chromatography system. Results demonstrated high efficiency of the monolithic trapping columns for trapping intact proteins for proteomic analysis in on-line capillary liquid chromatography system.

Recent development of monolithic materials as matrices in microcolumn separation systems

This review summarizes the development of monolithic materials, including both organic and inorganic polymers, according mainly to the papers published in the past two years. Due to their good permeability, fast mass transfer, high stability, and their ease of modification, such materials have been widely used in microcolumn separation systems, not only as stationary phases for CEC and capillary HPLC, but also as substances for sample concentration and enzyme reactor. All the research results demonstrate that monolithic materials in microseparation systems can be expected to play an increasingly important role in the analysis of complex samples.