Enhanced Chiral Separation of Amino Acid Based Surfactants Using Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes provide a vital importance in the knowledge of bionanotechnology applications. This research studied the interaction of amino based surfactants with multi walled carbon nanotubes, and how this interaction can affect chiral recognition of the surfactants in capillary electrophoresis.  Results indicated that the presence of the carbon nanotubes can help separate enantiomers of optically active material below critical micelle concentration of the surfactant.  Sodium undecyl leucine surfactant separated enantiomers of binaphthyl phosphate at 5 mM concentration, while no separation of this analyte was observed below 20 mM without the carbon nanotubes.  For the five analytes studied, with no exception, migration time of the analyte increased in the presence of the nanotubes.