Single-walled carbon nanotubes for improved enantioseparations on a chiral ionic liquid stationary phase in GC

In order to investigate whether the use of single-walled carbon nanotubes can improve enantioseparations on an ionic liquid stationary phase, a chiral ionic liquid, (R)-N,N,N-trimethyl-2-aminobutanol-bis(trifluoromethanesulfon)imidate, was synthesized. Two capillary columns, one containing the chiral ionic liquid and the other containing the single-walled carbon nanotubes and the chiral ionic liquid, were then prepared for GC. The results of the separations achieved with these columns show that coating the chiral ionic liquid stationary phase onto the capillary column containing single-walled carbon nanotubes improves the enantioselectivety of the chiral ionic liquid. This work indicates that using single-walled carbon nanotubes in this manner enables the application range of such GC chiral separations to be extended.