Ionic liquids as additives in high performance liquid chromatography: Analysis of amines and the interaction mechanism of ionic liquids

Abstract As novel solvents, ionic liquids have many applications in synthesis, catalysis and analytical separation, i.e. extraction and chromatography separation. In this paper, some amines including benzidine, benzylamine, N-ethylaniline and N,N′-dimethylaniline are separated using ionic liquids as additives for the mobile phase in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The effects of the length of alkyl chain or counterions on different ionic liquids and their concentrations on the separation of these analytes are performed. The differences between ionic liquids and tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBA) on the separation of o-, m-, p-phthalic acids are compared and the results show that ionic liquids are ion-pair reagents in essence, although their hydrophobicity and hydrogen bonding also play important roles.