Enantiomeric Resolution of Chiral Aromatic Sulfoxides on Non-Commercial Microcrystalline Cellulose Triacetate and Commercial Cellulose Acetate 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 or pesticides, obtained by elution with aqueous-alcoholic mixtures at different ratios. Noncommercial microcrystalline cellulose triacetate and commercial cellulose acetate (CEL 300-10/AC, Macherey-Nagel) plates were compared for their chiral resolution power, evidencing the much better performances of the former. The linearity of the densitometric response as a function of the amount of each enantiomer applied to the plate was investigated for selected compounds. Correlation coefficients higher than or equal to 0.99 were obtained in all cases, and the feasibility of the quantification of the individual enantiomers at tens to hundreds of nanograms spotted was demonstrated.