Mass transfer mechanism in liquid chromatography columns packed with shell particles: Would there be an optimum shell structure?

The mass transfer mechanisms in columns packed with old (55 μm Zipax and 5 μm Poroshell) and recently commercialized shell particles (2.7 μm Halo-C18 and Kinetex-C18) were investigated from a physico-chemical point of view. Combining a model of diffusion in heterogeneous packed beds (effective medium theory) with values of the heights equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETPs derived from the first and second central moments of the elution profiles) and of the peak variances provided by the peak parking method, we demonstrate that columns packed with current shell particles perform better than those packed with fully porous particles in resolving low molecular weight compounds because the eddy diffusion term of the van Deemter equation of the former is markedly smaller. The calculation of eddy diffusion in column beds suggests that the smaller A terms are due to smaller trans-column velocity bias in columns packed with shell particles. We also show that the mass transfer of large molecules (e.g., proteins) is faster when the internal volume accessible to the analyte increases. Therefore, it is suggested that shell particles made of concentric layers with average pore sizes increasing with increasing diameter would provide columns with higher efficiency.