An adhesive hydrogel functionalized silica sphere for polar analytes separation and analysis.

In response to the challenges associated with the chromatographic separation of polar compounds, this study aims to devise a solution by introducing a novel stationary phase. Hydrogels, characterized by a three-dimensional network structure, have aroused wide attention owing to its functional designability, multiple interaction sites and good adhesion, etc. In this work, an adhesive hydrogel functionalized silica stationary phase (Sil@PVA/TA) was synthesized using physical coating technique. Due to the co-existence of hydroxyl and benzene ring in the hydrogel structure, the obtained composites materials exhibited excellent separation performance for various of compounds and excellent column efficiency up to 71385.6 plates/m for thymidine. Furthermore, the hydrogel functionalized silica demonstrated superior selectivity to bare silica, diol-column and NH2-column for the separation of various of polar molecules, including, nucleosides/bases, alkaloids, organic acids, antibiotics and amino acids. Notably, for alkaloids, which frequently encounter peak tailing issues, Sil@PVA/TA demonstrated superior peak shape compared with C18 column. In short, this study successfully synthesized a hydrogel functionalized silica stationary phase, offering a novel method for the separation and analysis of polar compounds.