Selectivity of hexaphenylbenzene-based hydrocarbon stationary phase with propeller-like conformation for aromatic and aliphatic isomers

Yinhui Yang; Zhengfeng Chang; Xiaohong Yang; Meiling Qi; Jinliang Wang

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2018.01.048

Selectivity of hexaphenylbenzene-based hydrocarbon stationary phase with propeller-like conformation for aromatic and aliphatic isomers

Anal Chim Acta. 2018 Aug 3:1016:69-77. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2018.01.048. Epub 2018 Feb 3.

Authors

Yinhui Yang¹, Zhengfeng Chang¹, Xiaohong Yang¹, Meiling Qi², Jinliang Wang³

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Ministry of Education of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials and School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
² Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Ministry of Education of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials and School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address: mlqi@bit.edu.cn.
³ Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Ministry of Education of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials and School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address: jinlwang@bit.edu.cn.

PMID: 29534806
DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2018.01.048

Abstract

Herein we report a propeller-like hexaphenylbenzene-based hydrocarbon material (denoted as BT) as the stationary phase for capillary gas chromatography (GC). The statically-coated BT capillary column showed a high column efficiency of 4340 plates m^-1 and weak polarity. Owing to its unique conformation, π-electron toroidal delocalization and intrinsic microporosity, the BT stationary phase exhibited interesting selectivity for aromatic compounds over alkanes. Compared with the graphene (G) column, the BT column showed much prolonged retention and high selectivity for aromatic isomers, especially methylnaphthalenes, dimethylnaphthalenes and phenanthrene/anthracene, mainly because of its propeller-like conformation with rich intercalation effects. Moreover, it exhibited good column repeatability (intra-day, inter-day) and reproducibility (between-column) with RSD values on the retention times less than 0.08% for intra-day, 0.32% for inter-day and 3.8% for between-column, respectively. Also, it showed good potential for determination of minor isomer impurities in real samples. To the best of our knowledge, this work presents the first example of employing an neat aromatic hydrocarbon material as the GC stationary phase with high selectivity for analytes of a wide ranging polarity.

Keywords: Capillary gas chromatography; Hexaphenylbenzene-based material; Propeller-like conformation; Separation performance; Structural and positional isomers; Tetraphenylethylene units.