Preparation of high-efficiency HILIC capillary columns utilizing slurry packing at 2100 bar

Complex mixture analysis requires high-efficiency chromatography columns. Although reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) is the dominant approach for such mixtures, hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) is an important complement to RPLC by enabling the separation of polar compounds. Chromatography theory predicts that small particles and long columns will yield high efficiency; however, little work has been done to prepare HILIC columns longer than 25 cm packed with sub-2 μm particles. In this work, we tested the slurry packing of 75 cm long HILIC columns with 1.7 μm bridged-ethyl-hybrid amide HILIC particles at 2,100 bar (30,000 PSI). Acetonitrile, methanol, acetone, and water were tested as slurry solvents, with acetonitrile providing the best columns. Slurry concentrations of 50-200 mg/mL were assessed, and while 50-150 mg/mL provided comparable results, the 150 mg/mL columns provided the shortest packing times (9 min). Columns prepared using 150 mg/mL slurries in acetonitrile yielded a reduced minimum plate height (h_min) of 3.3 and an efficiency of 120,000 theoretical plates for acenaphthene, an unretained solute. Para-toluenesulfonic acid produced the lowest h_min of 1.9 and the highest efficiency of 210,000 theoretical plates. These results identify conditions for producing high-efficiency HILIC columns with potential applications to complex mixture analysis.