Effects of high concentrations of mobile phase additives on retention and separation mechanisms on a teicoplanin aglycone stationary phase in supercritical fluid chromatography

The objective of this study is to understand the behavior of a peptide in a medium containing supercritical carbon dioxide mixed with an alcohol (methanol) and acidic or basic additives in uncommonly high concentrations. Chirobiotic TAG is a chromatographic column made of silica bonded with a macrocyclic peptide, teicoplanin aglycone. With this stationary phase, two additives (trifluoroacetic acid and isopropylamine) were tested under extreme concentration conditions to observe the behavior of this peptide. Indeed, concentrations exceeding 1 M in the methanol co-solvent (>0.1 M overall concentration in the CO₂-methanol mixture) were used whereas usual additive concentrations employed in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) rarely exceed 50 mM in the co-solvent. One purpose was to modify the apparent pH of the fluid, which is normally slightly acidic (around 5) and consequently possibly changing the ionization state of the peptide. Firstly, the effect of acidic and basic additives on the polarity and the apparent pH were evaluated with the help of color indicators. This served to assess the ionization state of the peptide under the selected operating conditions. Secondly, 54 achiral and 24 chiral molecules were injected in the chromatographic column at different levels of additives. The achiral species served at establishing retention models based on linear solvation energy relationships (LSER), while the chiral species were examined for their enantioresolution. From the LSER equations and observation of chromatograms, it appeared that specific interactions between the peptide-based stationary phase and the analytes evolved when increasing the concentration of additives, particularly hydrogen bonds and ionic interactions. A bare silica stationary phase (Acquity BEH) served as reference to deconvolute the contributions of silica support and bonded peptide. This study, with these extreme conditions of mobile phase, could be useful to understand the behavior of such peptides in SFC mobile phases and also improve the knowledge of the effects of additives in SFC, which should be helpful in the future prospect of analyzing large biomolecules in SFC.