Effect of Amine Counterion Type on the Retention of Basic Compounds on Octadecyl Silane Bonded Silica-Based and Polybutadiene-Coated Zirconia Phases

In a previous paper, we compared the mixed-mode retention characteristics of cationic solutes on octadecyl silane-bonded silica (ODS) and polybutadiene-coated zirconia (PBD-ZrO2) phases. It is well recognized that both reversed-phase and ion-exchange interactions contribute to the retention of cations on ODS phases. The reversed-phase interaction results from the bonded hydrocarbon chain; the ion-exchange interaction originates in the ionized residual silanol groups. These two types of interactions also exist on the PBD-ZrO2 phase. The polybutadiene contributes to the reversed-phase interaction and the ionized zirconol, but primarily, the adsorbed Lewis base anions, such as phosphate or fluoride, contribute to the ion-exchange interaction. We have shown that on ODS phases, reversed-phase interactions are much more important, whereas the opposite is true of PBD-ZrO2 phases. In this work, we investigate the effect of several amine mobile phase counterions on the retention of cationic solutes on ODS and PBD-ZrO2 phases. The effects of the chain length and the type of amine (1(degree), 2(degree), 3(degree)) counterion on the retention of basic compounds were studied. In contrast to older studies of type A silica-based phases, the results show that the chain length and type of the amine blocker do not have a large effect on the retention of basic compounds with the newer type B silica-based materials. However, on the PBD-ZrO2 phase, very striking differences in retention were observed with different amine counterions. We show that the molecular geometry of the amine counterion has a significant effect on the retention of basic solutes on the PBD-ZrO2 phase.