Controlled Immobilization of Polysaccharide Derivatives for Efficient Chiral Separation

Polysaccharide-based chiral packing materials (CPMs) for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) have been widely used to determine the enantiomeric excess of a wide range of chiral compounds and also to resolve them on an industrial scale. These CPMs have conventionally been prepared by physically coating a chromatographic support with the polysaccharide derivatives. However, solvents that swell or dissolve the polysaccharide derivatives cannot be used as an eluent component because the column performance will be drastically decreased. This restriction on eluent selection is sometimes a serious issue for efficient analytical and preparative enantioseparations. In order to enhance the diversity of the eluent selection, immobilized CPMs, in which the polysaccharide derivatives are immobilized onto chromatographic supports, have been developed since 1987. This review summarizes the various immobilization methods of the polysaccharide derivatives mainly onto silica gel as a chromatographic support.