Star-shaped oligothiophene-functionalized truxene materials as stationary phases for capillary gas chromatography

This work reports oligothiophene-functionalized truxene-based stationary phases (TTT, TDT and TFT) with a unique star-shaped π-conjugated architecture for gas chromatographic (GC) separations. They exhibited medium polarity and column efficiency of 3340–3760 plates/m determined by naphthalene at 120   °C. Among them, the TTT stationary phase displayed advantageous resolving capability over the TDT and TFT phases for a wide ranging analytes from apolar to polar, particularly for structural and positional isomers, including alcohols, phenols, halogenated and alkylated benzenes and naphthalenes. Moreover, the TTT column exhibited good thermal stability and repeatability with relative standard deviation (RSD) values of 0.02%–0.07% for run-to-run, 0.10%–0.53% for day-to-day and 2.1%–2.9% for column-to-column, respectively. In addition, it was applied for the determination of isomer impurities in real samples, proving its good potential for practical GC analysis.