Preparation of Poly(styrene-divinylbenzene) Monolith Frits Encased in Common Polymer Tubing and Their Application in μLC

Porous disc-type frits are placed in both ends of a chromatography column to keep the stationary phase in and to let the mobile phase penetrate in common columns.A very special column in view of frit technique is the monolith column.Its whole stationary phase is one body with various multiple porous channels, thus no additional frits are necess ary since the whole stationary phase functions as a frit.1,2Details of monolith columns and their applications can be found in some excellent review articles and the references cited thereof.3-6Studies on home-made microcolumns and disposable microcolumns have been being carried in our laboratory.7-10Especially we introduced the preparation method of dependable tubing-frits and a column of a new simple design by installing the tubing-frits at the column inlet and outlet unions8 instead of sintered silica capillary frits.7In this study, we introduce an easy and cheap preparation method of tiny poly (styrene-divinylbebzene) monolith frits encased in polymer tubing.Common polymer tubing (1/16 inch O.D.) was filled with the monolith reaction mixture, heated, washed, dried and cut into thin slices to yield the frits.It should be noted that organic monolith frits were fabricated in silica capillaries for CEC application12 and that polystyrene-divinylbenzene monolith frits were also fabri cated in silica capillaries in ^LC application.13In those studies, however, frits were permanently fabricated in the capillary columns.In this study, separate monolith frits encased in polymer tubing have been prepared.