Polymer-Silica Hybrids: Evaluation of Grafted Poly(acrylonitrile) as Organic Phase for High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

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Abstract
Poly(acrylonitrile) with a terminal reactive group at one side of the main chain was prepared by telomerization of acrylo-nitrile with 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane and then immobilized onto porous silica. HPLC using the packed column (Sil-ANn) and an aqueous solution as a mobile phase showed several unique retention behaviors for hydrocarbons: (1) the retention factor for alkylbenzenes was almost independent of the alkyl length although simply cyanopropylated silica (Sil-CN) showed the increase of the retention time with increase of the alkyl length. (2) Sil-ANn showed remarkably better selectivity for π-electron containing hydrocarbons compared with Sil-CN and hydrophobized silica. In this paper, such specificity of Sil-ANn is discussed in relation to π-electron recognition ability of poly(acrylonitrile) moiety.