Preparation and evaluation of mesoporous silica layers on radially elongated pillars

The present paper describes the application of a sol-gel procedure on radially elongated pillars (REPs) using tetramethoxysilane and methyltrimethoxysilane. After octadecylsilylation, the quality of the porous layered REP (PLREP) columns was evaluated by in-situ determination of migration velocities and band broadening of coumarin dyes with fluorescence microscopy in reversed-phase liquid chromatography. Based on the increase in retention due to the sol-gel process, an increase in accessible specific surface by a factor of 112 was observed. Argon physisorption measurements on bulk monoliths prepared with the same method revealed a predominant pore size of 91 Å. Plate heights as low as 0.4–0.8 μm (k = 0–1.97) could be obtained thanks to the very low dispersion of the REP format and to the fact that the applied silica layer was conformally and uniformly deposited on the flow-through channels. A kinetic plot analysis demonstrated that the studied PLREP column will deliver more theoretical plates per unit of time than a 5 μm core shell packed bed when more than 1.0 × 10 ⁴ theoretical plates are required.