Hydrogen bonding investigation in Pyridoxine/β-cyclodextrin complex based on QTAIM and NBO approaches

Cyclodextrin-modified graphene quantum dots as a novel additive for the selective separation of bioactive compounds by capillary electrophoresis

Highly reliable separation and determination of various biologically active compounds were achieved using capillary electrophoresis (CE) based on β-cyclodextrin-functionalized graphene quantum dots (βcd-GQDs) as the background electrolyte additive. βcd-GQDs improve the separation efficiency between peaks of all analytes. No addition of surfactants or organic solvents was needed in the running buffer containing βcd-GQDs. Up to eight consecutive runs were acquired with high precision for the separation of resveratrol, pyridoxine, riboflavin, catechin, ascorbic acid, quercetin, curcumin, and even of several of their structural analogs. Baseline separation was achieved within just 13 min as a result of the effective mobility of the analytes along the capillary owing to the differential interaction with the additive. The proposed analytical method displayed a good resolution of peaks for all species selecting two absorption wavelengths in the diode array detector. Detection limits lower than 0.28 µg mL^-1 were found for all compounds and precision values were in the range of 2.1-4.0% in terms of the peak area of the analytes. The usefulness of the GQD-assisted selectivity-enhanced CE method was verified by the analysis of food and dietary supplements. The applicability to such complex matrices and the easy and low-cost GQD preparation open the door for routine analyses of food and natural products. The concept of using such a dual approach (macromolecules and nanotechnology) has been explored to tackle the separation of various bioactive compounds in nutritional supplements and food. Schematic illustration of the electrophoretic separation of the bioactive molecules in the capillary which is filled with the running solution without (top) and with βcd-GQDs (bottom). The fused silica capillary with negatively ionizable silanol groups at the wall. The voltage is applied at positive polarity at the outlet. R, riboflavin; r, resveratrol; P, pyridoxine; C, catechin; c, curcumin; A, ascorbic acid; Q, quercetin.

DFT-ONIOM study of the dopamine–β-CD complex: NBO and AIM analysis

In this work, we conducted a systematic search of the minimum energy of a dopamine–β-cyclodextrin complex via different ONIOM approaches using both mixed (DFT-HF) and nonmixed (DFT-DFT) combinations. Different density functionals were employed: B3LYP, MPW1PW91, M05-2X, M06-2X, and ωB97X-D. Two different basis sets were used on the dopamine–β-cyclodextrin complex; a lower basis set (3-21G*) is used on β-cyclodextrin and a higher basis set (6-31G(d)) is used on dopamine. To fulfill this task, complexation and deformation energies were determined. The relative performance of these functionals was compared with that obtained with the DFT method at the M06-2X/6-31G(d) level that is chosen as a reference method. Although we did not clearly establish an assessment of the relative performance of these density functionals, the efficacy of the ONIOM combination (DFT-HF) is shown compared with a nonmixed ONIOM combination (DFT-DFT). The intermolecular hydrogen bond interactions of the complex obtained with the full M06-2X/6-31G(d) have been analyzed with the atoms-in-molecules and natural bond rrbital methodologies.