Porous Graphitic Carbon in Biomedical Applications

Reversed phase chromatography is the most widely used technique in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) because of its versatility. The column packing material is usually porous silica chemically bonded with a hydrocarbonaceous stationary phase such as butyl-, octyl-, or octadecylsilane. These materials, however, have limited usable pH range (~2-7.5) and they also possess undesired residual silanols due to incomplete coverage or gradual hydrolysis of the bonded phase. Improvements in bonding chemistry have led to silica-based reversed phase packings which are virtually free of residual silanols, e.g., base-deactivated reversed phase, while polymer-based reversed phase materials extended the usable pH…