Influence of ionic liquids as electrolyte additives on chiral separation of dansylated amino acids by using Zn(II) complex mediated chiral ligand exchange CE.

In this work, investigation of the comparative influence of diverse ionic liquids (ILs) as electrolyte additives on the chiral separation of dansylated amino acids by using Zn(II)-L-arginine complex mediated chiral ligand exchange CE (CLE-CE) was conducted. It has been found that not only the varied substituted group number, but also the alkyl chain length of the substituted group on imidazole ring in the structure of ILs show different influence on chiral separation of the analytes in the CLE-CE system, which could be understood by their direct influence on EOF. Meanwhile, the variation of anion in the structure of ILs displayed remarkably changed performance and the ILs with Cl(-) showed the most obvious promoting effect on the chiral separation performance. Among the investigated seven ILs, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride was validated to be the proper electrolyte additive in the CLE-CE system. Moreover, it has been observed that 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride also has obvious promotive effect on the labeling performance. The results have demonstrated that the ILs with different structures have important relation to their performance in CLE-CE and to their labeling efficiency in dansylation of the analytes.