One-pot preparation of a novel monolith for high performance liquid chromatography applications

Various novel porous organic-based monoliths with the mode of hydrophobicity were synthesized by in situ free-radical crosslinking copolymerization and optimized for the separations of small molecules and high-performance reversed-phase chromatography (RP-chromatography). These monoliths contained co-polymers based on glycidyl methacrylate (GMA)/ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA)/tripropylene glycol diacrylate (TPGDA) or EDMA/TPGDA. A mixture of cetanol, methanol and poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) was used as the porogen, with the ratio of these solvents being varied along with the polymerization temperature to generate a library of monoliths. The conditions were optimized and the resulting poly (GMA-co-TPGDA-co-EDMA) monolith was investigated by infrared spectrometer (IR), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), and mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP), respectively. The column performance was assessed by the separation of a series of neutral solutes of benzene derivatives. The result demonstrated that the prepared monolith exhibited an RP-chromatographic behavior and relatively homogeneous structure, good permeability and separation performance. Moreover, the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the retention factor values for benzene derivatives were less than 1.5% (n=7, column-to-column). The approach used in this study was extended to the separation of anilines.