Imidazolium-based ionic liquid surfactants as pseudostationary in combination with a chiral selector in micellar electrokinetic chromatography

In recent years, ionic liquid-based surfactants have drawn more and more attention. As a new promising brand of surfactants, ionic liquid-based surfactants have their unique properties and superior aggregation behavior, which can be introduced as micellar pseudostationary in MEKC mode. In this paper, a novel ionic liquid-based surfactant, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolum dodecyl sulfate [C(4)MIm][C12SO4], was synthesized through ion exchange reaction and applied for the first time to form micellar as pseudostationary phase for chiral separation with clindamycin phosphate as chiral selector. As observed, compared with conventional non-ionic liquid anionic surfactant, improved separation of tested drug enantiomers was obtained in the established MEKC system with ionic liquid-based surfactant. Parameters such as concentration of ionic liquid-based surfactants, type and proportion of organic modifier, concentration of chiral selector, and pH of buffer solution were systematically investigated to optimize the ionic liquid-based surfactant MEKC system.