Monodisperse polymer beads as packing material for high‐performance liquid chromatography. Preparation of macroporous poly(2,3‐epoxypropyl vinylbenzyl ether‐co‐divinylbenzene) beads, their properties, and application to HPLC separations

In search for HPLC separation media with new surface chemistries, a styrene‐based monomer, 2,3‐epoxypropyl vinylbenzyl ether, containing reactive epoxide groups has been syn‐thesized and copolymerized with divinylbenzene in a suspension polymerization. The process involves the use of size monodisperse particles that are swollen with monomer and then polymerized in the presence of a porogenic diluent consisting of a mixture of 4‐methyl‐2‐pentanol and octane. The effect of concentration of divinylbenzene on the pore size dis‐tribution and the specific surface area of the resulting uniformly sized porous poly(2,3‐epoxypropyl vinylbenzyl ether‐co‐divinylbenzene) beads has been studied. The epoxide groups of the copolymer have been hydrolyzed and the beads used for reversed‐phase chro‐matography of both small molecules and proteins to show the effect of hydrophobicity of the matrix on the separation properties. Reversed‐phase chromatography of alkylbenzenes follows the expected pattern while for proteins the hydrolyzed beads with the highest content of the crosslinking monomer exhibit a remarkable deviation from the predicted retention characteristics. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.