Acrylic continuous beds for bioseparation: synthesis and characterization

Abstract

Continuous beds, also described as monoliths, are a continuous porous material, that is covalently attached to a capillary wall due to capillary wall modification process. Stationary phase forms micro-, meso-, macropores and has a bimodal pore size distribution [1]. S. Hjerten was the first who published about continuous beds application for high-performance liquid chromatography in 1989 [2]. Due to formed perfusive channels, continuous beds have good hydrodynamic permeability. Monoliths gained a lot of interest because of their benefits against particulate stationary phases. Such advantages are: easy in situ preparation, more efficient separation, biocompatibility and more. Their porous morphology can be regulated by many factors during polymerization [3]. The aim of this work was to synthesize acrylic continuous beds, characterize their structure parameters, hydrodynamic permeability and determine how total monomer concentration in polymerization mixture can influence continuous beds morphology. During this work, two stationary phases with different total monomer concentration %T were synthesized: continuous bed S17, which total monomer concentration was 17% and S23, which %T was equal to 23%. Hydrodynamic permeability was determined measuring water flow through capillaries at relative pressure 1 bar/cm. All capillary column and structure parameters were determined by inverse size exclusion chromatography using polystyrene standards. Detailed results of the work will be presented during the conference.