Metal chelates, stationary phase additives

In this reversed phase high performance liquid chromatographic method for neutral and cationic metal chelates with azo dyes, tetraalkylammonium salts are added to an aqueous organic mobile phase. The tetraalkylammonium in salts are dynamically coated on the reversed stationary support. As a result of the addition of tetraalkylammonium salts, the retention of the chelates is remarkably reduced. Tetrabutylammonium bromide permits rapid separation and sensitive spectrophotometric detection of the vanadium(V) chelate with 2-(8-quinolylazo)-5-(dimethylamino)-phenol, making it possible to determine trace vanadium(V). 

The peak shapes of metal chelating analytes are often poor because metal impurities in the stationary phase behave as active sites characterized by slowo desorption kinetics and higher interaction energies compared to reversed phase ligand sites. This phaiomaion is typical of silica-based stationary phases [31] ultrapure silicas were made commercially available to reduce it. However, styrene-divinylbenzene-based chromatogripliic packings suffer from the same problem and it was hypothesized that metals may be present in the matrix at trace conditions because they were used as additives in the polymerization process they may have been c tured via Lewis acid-base interactions between the aromatic ring n electrons and impurities in the mobile phase [32]. 

Sorption of Cu(tfac)2 on a column depends on the amount of the compound injected, the content of the liquid phase in the bed, the nature of the support and temperature. Substantial sorption of Cu(tfac)2 by glass tubing and glass-wool plugs was observed. It was also shown that sorption of the copper chelate by the bed is partialy reversible . The retention data for Cr(dik)3, Co(dik)3 and Al(dik)3 complexes were measured at various temperatures and various flow rates. The results enable one to select conditions for the GC separation of Cr, Al and Co S-diketonates. Retention of tfac and hfac of various metals on various supports were also studied and were widely used for the determination of the metals. Both adsorption and partition coefficients were found to be functions of the average thickness of the film of the stationary phase . Specific retention volumes, adsorption isotherms, molar heats and entropy of solution were determined from the GC data . The retention of metal chelates on various stationary phases is mainly due to adsorption at the gas-liquid interface. However, the classical equation which describes the retention when mixed mechanisms occur is inappropriate to represent the behavior of such systems. This failure occurs because both adsorption and partition coefficients are functions of the average thickness of the film of the stationary phase. It was pointed out that the main problem is lack of stability under GC conditions. Dissociation of the chelates results in a smaller peak and a build-up of reactive metal ions. An improvement of the method could be achieved by addition of tfaH to the carrier gas of the GC equipped with aTCD" orFID" . ... 

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