Comparison of Octadecyl-Bonded Alumina and Other Stationary Phases for Lipophilicity Estimation by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

A recently developed octadecyl-bonded alumina stationary phase (ODA) was evaluated for determining the lipophilicities of organic compounds by high performance liquid chromatography. Using a column packed with this material and mobile phases consisting of methanol and aqueous buffers, the correlation between the octanol-water partition coefficients (log P's) of compounds of various chemical classes and the logarithms of their chromatographic capacity factors (log k's) was found to be superior to that obtained using columns packed with octadecylsilica, poly butadiene-coated alumina or octadecyl-derivanzed polystyrene-divinylbenzene copolymer. In contrast to results obtained with other columns, phenols and other hydrogen-bonding compounds did not need to be treated as a separate data set on the ODA column to obtain good correlations between log k's and log P's. The resistance of ODA to degradation by alkaline solvents allowed the use of a basic mobile phase (pH > 10) for suppressing ionization and determining the lipophilicities of organic bases which could not be evaluated within the stable pH range of ODS (pH 2–8). The log P's of five basic pharmaceutical compounds determined in this manner were found to be significantly higher than previously reported values. Evidence is presented which indicates that the previously reported log P values of these compounds are inaccurate, due to improper correction for ionization.