Retention characteristics of water-soluable calixarene modified moble phases in HPLC.

Abstract

In recent years a class of compounds classified as calixarenes, basket-shaped macromolecules comprised of phenolic units arranged in a cup, have become of interest in many areas of chromatography. A specific area of interest for this work, is their use as mobile phase modifiers in reversed-phase HPLC. This interest is due principally to similarities in host/guest complex formation between the calixarenes and the cyclodextrins. These similarities have led to the belief that calixarenes will form significant host/guest interactions with solute molecules during chromatography. Interactions have been determined to take place by the reduction of capacity factors of solutes when a calixarene additive was introduced to the mobile phase. One problem associated with use of calixarenes as mobile phase modifiers is their strong absorbance in the UV region of the spectrum. This problem has been circumvented by fluorescence and Vis absorbance detection of solutes has been successfully employed here to get around this problem.