Effect of Alkyl Chain Length of Bonded Silica Phases on Separation, Resolution and Efficiency in High Performance Liquid Chromatography

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Abstract
A comparative study of alkyl bonded phases was carried out under optimum solvent conditions for each phase. Three columns, RP-2, RP-8 and RP-18, were tested for their efficiency and resolving power using three groups of compounds in three binary organic-water mobile phases. The organic solvents were acetonitrile, methanol and tetrahydrofuran which are widely used as solvent modifiers. The results indicate that each of the three factors, i.e. solvent, solute and bonded alkyl chain length, play an important role, with the solvent being the most significant. When tetrahydrofuran-water was used as the mobile phase, the ratio of THF/H2O did not vary by much when an RP-2, RP-8 or RP-18 column was used to separate naphthalene from biphenyl, dimethylphthalate from diethylphthalate or anthraquinone from methyl, anthraquinone and ethyl anthraquinone. When acetonitrile-water and methanol-water were used the ratio of organic modefier to water changed so as to accomodate the hydrophobic properties of the columns. The efficiency of the columns, expressed as theoretical plates per meter (TPM) was highest when acetonitrile-water was used as the mobile phase. Although there were variations in TPM and resolution from column to column, the three columns gave good separation of the components of the three groups of compounds.