Inertness and Stability of Newly Developed Wide-Pore Bonded Silica Gels

Abstract

The physically and chemically stable and batch-to-batch reproducible bonded phases of wide-pore size (300Å) were developed by using silica gels of purity over 99.99%. The chemically modified silica gels of butyl, pentyl, and octadecyl bonded phases were stable and inert for over 10,000 hours immersion in aqueous 1.0% trifluoroacetic acid (pH 1.5):CH₃CN-50:50 and 20 mM sodium phosphate buffer (pH 10.0):CH₃CN-50:50.

The inert and stability tests were carried out using pyridine, phenol, toluene, 8-hydroxyquinoline, and dihydroxynaphthalene. The chemical inertness and stability of these new columns have permitted the analysis of a wide variety of separations important for the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries. The use of eluents at basic pH for peptides and enzymatic digest fragments of proteins has added a new dimension to the analysis of proteins.