Carbon clad zirconia and separations of diastereoisomers of low molecular weight polystyrenes

The general aim of this work was to illustrate the exceptional resolving power of carbon clad zirconia surfaces for the separation of diastereoisomers of low molecular weight polystyrenes. Separations are reported in which four diastereoisomers of n-butyl polystyrene with four configurational repeating units were separated in less than two minutes. Some variability between lot numbers of carbon clad zirconia was observed, which should be noted by chromatographers. Perhaps the most critical aspect that emerged from this study was that stationary phase materials from differing batches should never be mixed, particularly for long term studies.