The efficient analysis of neutral and highly polar pharmaceutical compounds using reversed-phase and ion-exchange electrochromatography

Summary

Highly polar compounds, such as tricyclic antidepressants are very difficult to analyse by electrochromatography with conventional reversed-phase silica-based chromatography packings. At high pH (high electroosmotic flow) the test compounds were not eluted from a Spherisorb ODS-1 column, as a result of strong interactions between the analyte and residual silanol groups on the packing material. By lowering the pH of the mobile phase, whereby the highly basic test compounds become positively charged, it was possible to elute the samples but only with severe peak tailing. Because the electroosmotic flow was greatly reduced, the elution time for neutral species became prohibitively long. By use of a strong cation exchanger in place of C₁₈-silica it was found possible to resolve a series of highly basic compounds with very high efficiencies, with very little evidence of peak tailing. Plate numbers in excess of 8 million per metre were observed.