Stationary phase general properties

Silica stationary phases display some ion exchange properties, which may also influence the separation characteristics of silica. One of the main disadvantages of the use of silica and silica-based stationary phases is their instability even at slightly alkaline pH, such as 8.0. HPLC stationary phases can be characterized with the average particle diameter and the distribution of particle size. Smaller average diameter and narrow particle size distribution generally enhances the efficacy of separation. The average particle diameter can be calculated with different methods ... 

Besides the packings mentioned above, a range of other stationary phases exists as well, bnt they are rarely used in pharmaceutical analysis. Even with this more limited selection of ligands, packings with quite different selectivities can be created, as in shown in Section III. F. The diversity stems from the choices in the properties of the silica, such as pore volume, pore size, surface area and purity as well as differences in ligand density. Nevertheless, general statements about different phases can be derived, and these are covered in the next section. 

New brush-type phases (donor-acceptor interactions) are appearing all the time. " Examples are stationary phases comprising quinine derivatives and trichloro-dicyanophenyl-L-a-amino acids as chiral selectors. Quinine carbamates, which are suitable for the separation of acidic molecules through an ionic interaction with the basic quinine group, are also commonly used but in general they are classified with the anion-exchange type of chiral selectors (see further) because of their interaction mechanism, even though r-donor, r-acceptor properties occur. (Some separations on Pirkle-type CSPs are shown in Table 2.)... 

Since CEC is a hybrid technique, the differential migration of analytes through the stationary phase bed will generally involve lipophilic, electrostatic, and electrophoretic processes between the analytes and the stationary and mobile phases. Consequently, the applied voltage and electrical field strength and the mobile phase properties such as pH, buffer concentration, ionic strength, temperature, and the organic content will all affect the separation. For a detailed discussion, also refer to reference 10. 

---