Preparation of open tubular molecule imprinted polymer capillary columns with various templates by a generalized procedure and their chiral and non‐chiral separation performance in CEC

A generalized preparation procedure of open tubular (OT) molecule imprinted polymer (MIP) columns is proposed for a number of templates with acidic functionality such as profen drugs and others. The template (S‐enantiomer) was mixed with methacrylic acid, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate and 4‐styrenesulfonic acid, dissolved in a porogen mixture of ACN/2‐propanol (9/1), and incubated in a pretreated and silanized fused silica capillary by the thermal non‐covalent polymerization procedure. The whole preparation procedure was exactly the same for all the MIP capillaries except for the selection of template. Nevertheless, the morphologies of the MIP layers were markedly variant depending upon the choice of template. The separation efficiency of each OT‐MIP column for chiral separation of R‐ and S‐enantiomers was examined and tuned to obtain the best separation efficiency by changing the chromatographic parameters such as eluent composition and pH. Different optimized conditions were obtained for different OT‐MIP columns. Nevertheless, a unified eluent could be used to obtain still quite satisfactory results. Non‐chiral separation of the MIP columns were also examined in the unified eluent with two sets of test mixtures, that is, a mixture of alkylbenzenes and a mixture of small polar solutes. The chiral and non‐chiral separation of this study resulted in very good separation efficiencies. This work is the very first study for the generalization of preparation of OT‐MIP columns for a number of templates.