Application Of Graphene As The Stationary Phase For Open-tubular Capillary Electrochromatography

Open-tubular capillary electrochromatography (OTCEC), a hybrid technique betweenopen-tubular chromatography and capillary electrophoresis, has shown great potential toreach high efficiency for the analysis of complex solute mixtures. Graphene, asingle-atom-thick sheet of carbon composed of six member rings, has unique physicochemicalproperties and has been widely applied in sensors and biosensors, energy storage,synthesizing nano-composites, drug delivery, catalytic and solid-phase micro extraction. Here,we report the application of graphene as a novel stationary phase in OTCEC, with a simpleand reliable immobilization procedure based on lyser by layer electrostatic assembly. Byseparation of the standard nitroaniline isomers, the chromatographic properties of thegraphene-coated OT column were investigated, the results demonstrate that the proposed OTcolumn exhibits high separation efficiency and good repeatability. The method wassuccessfully applied to analyze nitroaniline isomers in real hair dye samples. In addition,effective separation of four organic exploders (TNT, PETN, RDX, and HMX) were alsoachieved on the column.