Immobilization of poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers on zirconia chromatographic support

The motivation of this work was to develop a method of immobilizing dendrimers on chromatographic supports as stationary phases and characterize them by studying the interactions between the immobilized dendrimer and small solutes using high-performance liquid chromatography.;Commercially available poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers were immobilized on the surface of zirconia liquid chromatographic support by exploiting Lewis acid-base interactions between multiple carboxylic acid groups on the periphery of the dendrimer and the zirconia surface Lewis acid sites. The modified surface exhibited good stability and the zirconia column can be regenerated by citrate buffer or sodium hydroxide. Small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were employed to investigate the chemical properties of the surface-adsorbed dendrimers.