A novel silica based click lysine anion exchanger for ion exchange chromatography

Ion chromatography (IC) is one of the most powerful analysis technologies for the determination of charged compounds. A novel click lysine stationary phase was prepared via Cu(I) catalyzed alkyne-azide 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (CuAAC) and applied to the analysis of inorganic ions. The chromatographic evaluation demonstrated good performance (e.g. the plate number of thiocyanate is similar to 50 000 plates m(-1)) and effective separation ability for the common inorganic anions with aqueous Na2SO4 eluent. The separation mechanism was observed to be mainly dominated by ion exchange interaction. The retention of these analytes is highly dependent on the pH value of eluent. Compared with the lysine stationary phase prepared via the conventional manner, the click lysine exchanger demonstrated shorter retention time and better ion separation characteristics under the same chromatographic conditions, which is a great advantage for rapid separation and analysis of inorganic ions.