Probing strong adsorption of solute onto C18-silica gel by fluorescence correlation imaging and single-molecule spectroscopy under RPLC conditions.
Understanding molecular adsorption at a chromatographic interface is of great interest for addressing the tailing problem in chemical separations. Single-molecule spectroscopy and confocal fluorescence correlation imaging are used to study the adsorption sites of C(18) silica beads under RPLC chromatographic conditions. The experiments show that cationic molecule rhodamine 6G laterally diffuses through the chromatographic interface of a C(18) hydrocarbon monolayer and acetonitrile with occasional reversible strong adsorptions. Fluorescence correlation imaging extracts the rare strong adsorption events from large data sets, revealing that the strong adsorption sites are randomly distributed throughout the silica beads. Virtually every imaging pixel of silica beads adsorbs molecules. Single-molecule spectroscopy of the 584 strong adsorption events observed indicates that the strong adsorptions persist on the time scales from several milliseconds to seconds, having an average desorption time of 61 ms. The strong adsorption events are rare, comprising 0.3% of the total observation time. The sizes of strong adsorption sites are within the optical resolution of confocal imaging.
Zhong
Zhenming
Z
Department of Chemistry, Optical Science and Technology Center, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA.
Lowry
Mark
M
Wang
Gufeng
G
Geng
Lei
L
D000097:Acetonitriles / Q000737:chemistry; D000327:Adsorption; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D005453:Fluorescence; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007834:Lasers; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D012235:Rhodamines / Q000737:chemistry; D058428:Silica Gel; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*; D013057:Spectrum Analysis / Q000379:methods*
D000097:Acetonitriles; D012235:Rhodamines; C026188:rhodamine 6G; D058428:Silica Gel; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; C032159:acetonitrile