Enantiomeric Resolution of Chiral Aromatic Sulfoxides on Non-Commercial Cellulose Tribenzoate Plates

This paper reports a number of original thin-layer chromatographic enantioseparations of chiral sulfoxides that are important for their use as drugs and drug metabolites, pesticides, or chiral auxiliaries, obtained by elution with alcohols or aqueous-alcoholic mixtures at different ratios on cellulose tribenzoate. Detection was performed by exposing the plates to iodine vapor, followed by densitometry at 410 nm. Under these experimental conditions, ten of the eighteen chiral aromatic sulfoxides investigated were baseline or partially resolved, thus providing useful chromatographic information for this important class of racemic compounds. Data obtained with cellulose tribenzoate were compared to those achieved with microcrystalline cellulose triacetate for the same group of chiral sulfoxides, evidencing an interesting complementary behavior of the two stationary phases.