Spherical mesoporous silica particles by spray drying: Doubling the retention factor of HPLC columns

Micrometer sized spherical mesoporous MCM-41 particles were synthesized to use as a packing material for High Performance Liquid Chromatography. Spray drying was used for the synthesis of the particles and this enables easy up scaling. The entire synthetic procedure was optimized to ensure optimum particle morphology while preserving a high surface area and acceptable yields. The resulting material, with an average particle size of 1.8 mu m, a narrow size distribution and a large porosity was subsequently grafted with C18 groups, packed into column assemblies and evaluated by reversed phase HPLC. The packing remained stable during the entire series of HPLC analysis, which were performed (>300 runs). Moreover the high accessible surface area leads to superior retention factors (doubling the best performing commercial columns) opening prospects for, e.g., the analysis of difficult mixtures of highly polar components. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.