Alkylamine/Phosphoric Acid as a Universal Buffer System for Basic and Acidic Mobile Phases in HPLC

Abstract

This paper describes the production of a universal buffer system which can be used for acidic, neutral and basic mobile phases in HPLC. The mixture of alkylamine and phosphoric acid diluted with water gives the possibility to carry out separations with basic buffers on reversed phase columns with a silica gel support. The organic bases (n-butylamine/triethylamine) are less aggressive against the silica gel than mineral bases. The influence of different pH-values upon the quality of the separations is tested with some selected basic and acidic compounds. In addition to the tests with an ODS column we investigated the chromatographic behaviour (at different pH-values) of a new HPLC material (Polymer Gel) which is not based upon a silica gel support.