Rhodamine B as ligand for affinity chromatography. Fixation studies onto cellulose by a curing method

Rhodamine B was post-grafted onto cellulose in order to be lately used for affinity chromatography as a biomimetic ligand. A curing method has been developed to bound rhodamine onto cellulose via esterification, by heating an intimate mixture of both, at different temperatures above 180 °C. The lactone form of rhodamine B has been proposed as the effective reactant generated in situ during the experimental conditions. Pursuing further improvements of the amount of rhodamine bound onto cellulose, identical experiments were carried out in the presence of catalytic amounts of zinc chloride and sodium hypophosphite. The grafted materials obtained were quantitatively and qualitatively characterized using SEM, tlc, GPC, EA, FT-IR and Vis spectroscopy.