Characterization of Fullerene-Modified Silica as a Complement to Graphite-like phases for Use in Two-Dimensional High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Carbonaceous sorbents have a long and rich history of development and application in all areas of separation science. Interest in these materials has been fueled by observations that solute–sorbent interactions are mainly adsorptive in nature and thus selectivities are frequently quite different from what is observed with small organic ligands bonded to porous substrates. However, despite over four decades of intense study and development of these materials for use in reversed-phase liquid chromatography, wide adoption continues to be hindered by a few significant, negative attributes of these materials, most notably irreversible adsorption and poor peak shape and separation efficiency for some classes of compounds. In this work we describe the results of a study aimed at characterization of C60 fullerene-modified silica (FMS) materials that we believe nicely complement existing graphite-like carbonaceous phases for use in liquid chromatography. Since their first synthesis about 20 years ago, FMS material...