Preliminary Characterization of a Commercial Chiral Stationary Phase as a Selector for Chemical Sensor Applications Using a Quartz Crystal Microbalance

• Main Authors: W. J. Buttner, C-L. Lu, V. Perez-Luna, J. R. Stetter, G. K. Webster
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IFSA Publishing, S.L. 2009-02-01
• Series: Sensors & Transducers
• Subjects: Chiral selectivity; Chemical sensor; Quartz crystal microbalance; Chiral detection
• Online Access: http://www.sensorsportal.com/HTML/DIGEST/february_09/P_381.pdf

Verification of enantiomeric purity is an important analytical requirement in the pharmaceutical industry. Chiral purity assays are often performed via chromatographic techniques and performance is controlled by the adsorption of the analyte onto the coating. Since it is not always known which chiral specific coating would provide optimal specificity for a given enantiomeric pair, chromatographic method development can be a time consuming, waste generating, and expensive process. Thus, chemical sensors are being investigated to improve upon the efficiency of column method development. For this investigation, the Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) was chosen as the sensor platform for its ability to make real time condensed phase measurements. QCM sensors were coated with stereospecific coatings originally developed for use in commercial HPLC columns. The coated sensor readily produced unique responses upon exposures to individual enantiomeric isomers. Preliminary studies to assess the nature of the analyte-coating interaction and the resulting QCM response are presented.