Graphene oxide decorated monolithic column as stationary phase for capillary electrochromatography

In this work, GO bonded monolith (pAS-GO@PS-DVB) as the stationary phase for capillary electrochromatography was fabricated, which was achieved by a simple one-step in-situ copolymerization of styrene and vinylized GO in the presence of divinylbenzene as a cross-linker. GO functionalization was primarily completed using p-aminostyrene based on condensation reaction between amino and carboxyl groups. The characterization by infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy proved the covalent bonding of GO on the monolith. The average pore diameter via Barrett-Joyner-Halenda, specific surface area and pore volume via Brunauer-Emmett-Teller equation by nitrogen adsorption/desorption were determined to be 112.4nm, 485.8m(2)g(-1) and 1.4cm(3)g(-1), respectively. The pAS-GO@PS-DVB monolithic column gave effective separation for a wide range of aromatic compounds, which was based on hydrogen bonding and π-π interactions of GO with polar and/or non-polar organic compounds. The reproducibility in terms of the precisions of migration time, peak height and peak area was estimated below 6% using thiourea and other aromatic compounds. Furthermore, the differences of migration time, peak height and peak area between the first-week analysis and the forth-week analysis were less than 19%, indicating good stability of the proposed monolithic column in one month. The applicability of the pAS-GO@PS-DVB monolith was also demonstrated by baseline separation of three phenols and three anilines.