SEPARATION OF FULLERENES WITH NOVEL STATIONARY PHASES IN MICROCOLUMN HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY

Newly designed bonded phases have been synthesized and evaluated for the separation of fullerene molecules. Further investigations about the retention behaviour of fullerenes with these phases have been carried out systematically. In this study we describe the separation of fullerenes with novel bonded stationary phases in microcolumn high performance liquid chromatography (micro-HPLC) and also propose the basic separation mechanism of those molecules obtained from the preliminary chromatographic observations. The results indicate that the octadecyldiphenyl bonded silica phases, which have been synthesized from octadecyldiphenylchlorosilane as the silanization reagent, possess a better retentivity for fullerenes than the octadecyldimethylsilica phase (i.e. monomeric ODS phase) having a similar surface coverage value.