Figure 1
(a) The principle of HPLC chiral separation: a flow of dissolved chiral drug (racemic mixture containing both enantiomers) passes a chromatographic column filled with chiral stationary phase material (a 3D GNS-based material in our case). Due to a difference of retention time for enantiomers of opposite symmetry, one enantiomer passes the column faster than the other, so the enantiomers are separated. (b) Chromatographic separation of a chiral drug (in this case, ibuprofen in solution) with MOD3 or MOD1 3D GNS-containing stationary phase material. The colors of backgrounds indicate the mobile phase (light olive) and the stationary phase parts (cream color) of the separation process. In our experiments, positive optical rotation angle-enantiomers of ibuprofen and thalidomide passed through 3D GNS-containing separation columns faster than the corresponding negative rotation angle-enantiomers. The bottom part of the figure illustrates both chemical structure and morphology (SEM image) of mesoporous modified 3D GNS materials.
