Chiral interactions of the fluoroether anesthetics desflurane, isoflurane, enflurane, and analogues with modified cyclodextrins studied by capillary gas chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy: A simple method for column-suitability screening

Article abstract of DOI:10.1016/0040-4020(95)00860-B

Eighteen chiral analogues of the chiral fluoroether anesthetics desflurane, isoflurane, and enflurane are synthesized and studied by capillary GC on four cyclodextrin-derived stationary phases. Trends in separability and elution order of enantiomers are related to structure and absolute configuration. In particular, a very large separation factor is found for the commercial anesthetic desflurane using Lipodex E stationary phase, suggesting that a preparative enantiomer separation is possible. One of the stationary phases, Cyclodex G-TA, is found to be a chiral shift reagent for several of the fluoroethers. A rough correspondence is found relating the enantiomeric separation factor of a fluoroether and the chemical shift differences between its ¹H and ¹⁹F nuclei in the NMR spectrum. Based on this data, it is proposed that a simple NMR experiment can screen chiral stationary phases prior to a desired gas chromatographic enantiomer separation of a given chiral compound. Copyright