Improved Method of Molecular Imprinting of Cyclodextrin on Silica-gel Surface for the Preparation of Stable Stationary HPLC Phase

By using N-(3-triethoxysilyl)propylacrylamide (TPAAm), vinyl groups were introduced onto the surface of silica-gel. On the surface of this silica-gel, β-CyD was molecularly imprinted by using a redox initiator, and the composite was used as stationary phase of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The pump pressure was sufficiently low and did not increase even after continuous elution for 24 h. In order to prepare still more stable columns, a new polymerization process was developed. There, the redox initiator was first mixed with the surface-modified silica-gel and then vinylated β-CyD, crosslinker, and the template were added. This modification promoted the immobilization of β-CyD copolymer to the silica-gel, resulting in still lower pump pressure. Concurrently, the imprinting efficiency was increased in comparison with previous method where the redox initiator was directly added to the mixture of the β-CyD–template complex, crosslinker, and surface-modified silica-gel. The molecularly imprinted β-CyD column, prepared by this new method, efficiently discriminated the enantiomers of N-benzyloxycarbonyltyrosine.