Specific retention behaviour of metal (III) tetraphenylporphyrins in non-aqueous,reversed high-performance liquid chromatography

Summary The Co(II), Ni(II), Fe(III) and V(IV) complexes of tetraphenylporphine (TPP) can be eluted at short retention times from a LiChrosorb RP-18 column with pure ethanol. However, both Mn(III) and Co(III) complexes of metal TPP chloride type are so strongly retained on the column that they cannot be eluted. While the retention of other metal teraphenylporphine complexes was not affected, that of the metal(III) complexes of the TPP chloride type especially MnTPPCl and CoTPPCl, decreases dramatically with an increase in the concentration of NH₄Cl added into the mobile phase; a linear relationship between logk' and logNH₄Cl], with the slope of about–1, has been observed for these two metal(III) complexes in the NH₄Cl concentration range from 2.5×10^–4 to 1.3×10^–2 mol/l. Thus, the specific control of the retention of the metal(III) complexes is enabled by conditioning the NH₄Cl content of the mobile phase, and the chromatographic separation is demonstrated.