Insights into enantioselective separations of ionic metal complexes by sub/supercritical fluid chromatography

September 26, 2022

Title

Insights into enantioselective separations of ionic metal complexes by sub/supercritical fluid chromatography

Author

Troy T. Handlovic, M. Farooq Wahab, Houston D. Cole, Nagham Alatrash, Elamparuthi Ramasamy, Frederick M. MacDonnell, Sherri A. McFarland, Daniel W. Armstrong

Year

2022

Journal

Analytica Chimica Acta Volume 1228, 2 October 2022, 340156

Abstract

Sub/supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is a green separation technique that has been used to separate a wide variety of compounds and is proven to be immensely useful for chiral separations. However, SFC is currently not thought to be applicable for ionic compounds due to their low solubility in CO2, even with additives and organic modifiers. Recently, a large amount of research has been centered on octahedral complexes of Ru(II) and Os(II) with bidentate polypyridyl ligands due to their ability to serve in cancer treatment and other biological activities. These compounds exist as the delta (Δ) and lambda (Λ) enantiomers. Previously, similar compounds have been enantiomerically separated using HPLC and capillary electrophoresis, but never with SFC. Cyclofructan-6 (CF6) derivatized with (R)-naphthyl ethyl (RN) groups has been proven to be an effective chiral stationary phase for these separations in HPLC. This column chemistry was expanded to SFC to provide the first chiral separation of a wide variety (23 complexes in total) of ionic octahedral polypyridyl complexes. Unexpected behavior for mixing methanol and acetonitrile as the organic modifier will be discussed, along with the effects of additives. Enantioselectivity on CF6-RN chemistry is shown to be dependent on the conjugation level and rigidity of the metal complexes. Mass transfer kinetic behavior is also shown, and high-efficiency baseline resolved rapid separations are shown for fast screening or quantitation of representative coordination complexes.

Keywords

Metal complexes, Coordination complexes, Sub/supercritical fluid chromatography, Cyclofructan derivatives, Superficially porous particles, Fast chiral separation