Study on the chromatographic behavior of water-soluble vitamins on p-tert-butyl-calix[8]arene-bonded silica gel stationary phase by HPLC

In this paper, the chromatographic behavior of some water-soluble vitamins was studied on a new p-tert-butyl-calix[8]arene-bonded silica gel stationary phase (CABS, 5 μm particle size, the bonded amount 0.071 mmol g−1) by using vitamin standards as probes for HPLC. The comparative study of the separation of these compounds was done by using CABS and ODS as stationary phases under the same chromatographic conditions. The better separation of six vitamins including: B1, B2, B6, B12, C, and nicotinic acid (B5), on CABS can be achieved by using isocratic mode with methanol–phosphate buffer (25:75, (v/v)) as mobile phase within 20 min. The results show that the calix[8]arene-bonded phase exhibits high selectivity for water-soluble vitamins. We found that the elution order of B2 (12.08 min) and B12 (16.42 min) on CABS was very different from that of B12 (7.76 min) and B2 (18.47 min) on ODS, which indicate that different retention mechanisms exist in the chromatographic processes of the two stationary phases. According to the chromatographic data, it can be concluded that various chromatographic retention mechanisms are responsible for the separation of above compounds on CABS, such as hydrophobic interaction, hydrogen bonding interaction, and π–π interaction. The new packing has two advantages over ODS. On one hand, the polar and ionized analytes, such as C and B5, exhibited stronger affinities to CABS because of hydrogen bonding interaction. On the other hand, the retention of B2 and B12 became shorter on CABS with weaker hydrophobicity in comparison with ODS. The new material exhibits the promising application in the separation of water-soluble vitamins.