Retention mechanism of fatty alcohol ethoxylates in reversed-phase liquid chromatography

Fatty alcohol ethoxylates (FAEs) are widely used nonionic surfactants that have distributions in both alkyl and poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) chain length. Generally, two-dimensional liquid chromatography technique is required for the complete characterization of both distributions. By selecting a proper stationary and mobile phase condition, however, we can obtain fully resolved chromatograms of a FAE sample (Brij 30) with respect to both alkyl and PEO chain length by using a single reversed-phase C18 column and aqueous acetonitrile mobile phase. FAEs show a peculiar reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) retention behavior with an aqueous-organic mobile phase, the retention mechanism of which has not been fully elucidated. For a fixed alkyl chain length, FAEs with higher-molecular-mass PEO block elutes first and the van't Hoff plot of the retention factor shows a curvature. The unique retention behavior can be understood from the opposite thermodynamic characteristics associated with RPLC retention of PEO block and alkyl chain: the sorption process of PEO to the non-polar stationary phase shows ??Ho>0 and ??So>0 while the alkyl chain shows ??Ho<0 and ??So