Graphitic carbon nitride nanofibers in seaweed-like architecture for gas chromatographic separations

Seaweed-like graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has a unique porous architecture composed of interlocking g-C₃N₄ nanofibers (NF-C₃N₄) with much higher surface area than bulk g-C₃N₄ and shows good potential in separation science. This work investigated the separation performance of NF-C₃N₄ as stationary phase for capillary gas chromatographic (GC) separations. The NF-C₃N₄ column exhibits weak polarity and high column efficiency of 4728 plates/m for n-dodecane. Importantly, it displays good separation performance for a wide range of analytes and shows different retention behaviors from the bulk g-C₃N₄ column and commercial HP-5MS column with 5% phenylpolysiloxane. Particularly, it shows high resolving capability for both aliphatic and aromatic isomers. In addition, NF-C₃N₄ column has high thermal stability up to 280°C and good separation repeatability with relative standard deviation (RSD) values in the range of 0.29-0.61% for intra-day, 0.56-1.1% for inter-day and 2.0-4.9% for between-column, respectively. Moreover, it was applied for the determination of isomer impurities in real samples, showing good potential in GC applications.