Separation of enantiomers of native amino acids with polysaccharide-based chiral columns in supercritical fluid chromatography

Abstract In this short communication preliminary results are reported on the separation of enantiomers of underivatized amino acids on polysaccharide-based chiral columns in sub/super-critical fluid chromatography (SFC). Racemic mixtures of 14 amino acids were used to evaluate the chiral recognition ability of 8 different polysaccharide-based chiral columns with coated or covalently immobilized chiral selectors. Among the studied columns, the one based on cellulose (3,5-dichlorophenylcarbamate) exhibited the most universal chiral recognition ability providing baseline resolution for the enantiomers of 10 studied amino acids. In addition, the effect of mobile phase composition (in particular, of the amount of additive used), as well as the potential contribution of evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) to extra column band-broadening was evaluated.