End-modification of poly(ether-carbonate) copolymer by adamantane cages: An effective approach for improving the selectivity of gas chromatographic stationary phases

This work reports the investigation of a new poly(propylene-carbonate) copolymer terminated by the adamantane cages (APPC) as the stationary phase for gas chromatographic (GC) analyses. In GC, the se-lectivity of a stationary phase is the key factor that governs the column separation performance for ana-lytes, particularly those of high similarity in structures and properties. As such, we employed more than a dozen of isomer mixtures of separation difficulty for investigating the separation performance of the APPC column, involving the isomers of alkanes, alkylbenzenes, halobenzenes phenols and anilines. Meanwhile, the column coated with poly(propylene carbonate) diol (PPCD) differing from APPC only in their terminal groups and two commercial columns coated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polysiloxane, respectively, were used as the reference columns. The separation results evidenced the distinctly advantageous perfor-mance of the APPC column over the reference columns. Moreover, the APPC column showed excellent re-peatability and reproducibility with the relative standard deviation (RSD) values over the range of 0.01%- 0.04% for run-to-run, 0.15%-0.28% for day-to-day and 3.4%-3.9% for column-to-column (n = 4). Its appli-cation to GC-MS analysis of the verbena essential oil demonstrated its separation advantages for a wide range of components in practical samples. Up to date, the adamantyl-terminated poly(ether-carbonate) copolymers have not been reported in any fields. Its high-resolution performance demonstrates the fea-sibility of adamantyl-terminated block copolymers as highly selective stationary phases for GC analyses, which offers a vast room for fundamental researches and applications.(c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study reports the investigation of a new poly(propylene-carbonate) copolymer terminated by the adamantane cages (APPC) as the stationary phase for gas chromatographic (GC) analyses. The separation performance of the APPC column was compared to reference columns coated with poly(propylene carbonate) diol (PPCD), polyethylene glycol (PEG), and polysiloxane. The results showed that the APPC column has significantly advantageous performance and excellent repeatability and reproducibility.