Separation of purines and pyrimidines by normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography using dimethyl sulfoxide in binary and ternary eluents

Chromatographic systems with a silica sorbent and mobile phases containing dimethyl sulfoxide have been studied. It has been established that the substitution of isopropanol by dimethyl sulfoxide in binary eluents results in a specific selectivity of the chromatographic system and shows an improvement of the peak shape for the solutes under study. When mobile phases consisting of hexane, isopropanol and dimethyl sulfoxide (solvents with a limited mutual solubility) are used, changes in retention characteristics and peak symmetry are caused by a transition from adsorption to partition sorption mechanism. The stationary liquid phase is generated dynamically in the pores of silica, even in the mobile phases not saturated with a polar component. If the phase ratio of the column reaches 0.1, partition dominates over adsorption and such mixed partition–adsorption (MPA) systems show very good peak symmetry for the solutes under study. The investigation has shown that dimethyl sulfoxide-containing MPA systems are applicable in analytical practice.