Separation performance of pentiptycene-functionalized triblock copolymers towards the isomers of xylenes, phenols and anilines and the complex components in essential oil

This work presents the investigation of two new pentiptycene (PP)-functionalized triblock copolymers (PEPE1, PEPE2) for gas chromatographic (GC) analyses with an aim to address the separation problems toward analytes of high resemblance in properties and a wide variety of components in complex samples. Up to date, these two materials are not reported in any fields. The PEPE1 and PEPE2 columns showed close column efficiency (above 4000 plates/m) but differed in polarity, morphology and separation performance. As testified by the challenging Grob test mixture, the PEPE1 column exhibited comprehensively higher separation capability than the PEPE2 column and the commercial reference columns. Also, the PEPE1 column achieved high-resolution performance for both apolar and polar isomers of high resemblance, such as xylenes, phenols and anilines. Moreover, it displayed high inertness towards carboxylic acids and excellent separation repeatability and reproducibility tested by the aniline isomers with the RSD values in the range of 0.01-0.04% for run-to-run, 0.09-0.13% for day-to-day and 1.2-2.0% for column-to-column, respectively. Its application to GC-MS analysis of the essential oil from tea flowers demonstrated its advantageous separation performance towards a wide range of components and proved its feasibility for practical analyses of complex samples.