Titania as a sorbent in normal-phase liquid chromatography

“Sachtopore” a titanium dioxide sorbent for HPLC is compared to a silica, an alumina and a zirconia sorbent with regard to its physical and chemical properties and examples for chromatographic separations are given. Titania has hydroxyl groups on its surface that are only slightly acidic so that native titania can be used to separate basic molecules under normal-phase conditions. It is shown that this enables the purification of basic fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Also, a number of examples for the separation of non-basic isomeric substances mixtures are presented.