Chiral supercritical fluid chromatography on porous graphitic carbon using commercial dimethyl β-cyclodextrins as mobile phase additive

Using dimethylated-β-cyclodextrin mixtures (MeCD) as chiral selectors in CO2-polar modifier mobile phase and porous graphitic carbon as solid-phase, chiral supercritical (or subcritical) fluid chromatography was performed. The adsorbed quantity of MeCD onto the porous graphitic carbon (Hypercarb) was measured for various chiral selector concentrations using the breakthrough method with evaporative light scattering detector. The effects of MeCD concentration in the mobile phase, the nature of the polar modifier, the outlet pressure, the column temperature and the nature of the commercial MeCD mixture on the retention and the enantioselectivities were studied. For a given solute, the enantioselectivity is greatly dependent on the commercial MeCD mixture used. The retention mechanism was also studied. From the data, we find that the dominant mechanism for the chiral discrimination is the diastereoisomeric complexation in the mobile phase.