Recent applications and chiral separation development based on stationary phases in open tubular capillary electrochromatography (2019-2022)

Capillary electrochromatography (CEC) plays a significant role in chiral separation via the double separation principle, partition coefficient difference between the two phases, and electroosmotic flow-driven separation. Given the distinct properties of the inner wall stationary phase (SP), the separation ability of each SP differs from one another. Particularly, it provides large room for promising applications of open tubular capillary electrochromatography (OT-CEC). We divided the OT-CEC SPs developed over the past four years into six types: ionic liquids, nanoparticle materials, microporous materials, biomaterials, nonnanopolymers, and others, to mainly introduce their characteristics in chiral drug separation. There also added a few classic SPs that occurred within ten years as supplements to enrich the features of each SP. Additionally, we discuss their applications in metabolomics, food, cosmetics, environment, and biology as analytes in addition to chiral drugs. OT-CEC plays an increasingly significant role in chiral separation and may promote the development of capillary electrophoresis (CE) combined with other instruments in recent years, such as CE with mass spectrometry (CE/MS) and CE with ultraviolet light detector (CE/UV). (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Xi'an Jiaotong University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

Capillary electrochromatography (CEC) has a significant role in chiral separation, and open tubular capillary electrochromatography (OT-CEC) shows promising applications. OT-CEC stationary phases (SPs) developed over the past four years can be categorized into six types, and their characteristics in chiral drug separation are introduced. The applications of OT-CEC in metabolomics, food, cosmetics, environment, and biology, as well as its integration with other instruments like mass spectrometry (MS) and ultraviolet light detector (UV), are also discussed.