Brown Technology Innovations

Chromatography: No More Silver Nitrate

Brown also received a patent for a novel material for use in chromatography called metal thiolate chromatographic material, or MTCM. Discovered by a research team led by Dr. Yongsong Huang, Professor of Geological Sciences, MTCM will improve upon a process developed half a century ago.

Chromatography is used to separate organic compounds. Beyond applications in academic and pharmaceutical research, chromatography is used most frequently for quality control and research in the food industry. 

The current approach to chromatography involves silver nitrate, which is notorious for its limitations. Challenges include material instability, unwanted staining, silver ion bleeding and leaching into resulting compounds, and incompatibility with mass spectrometry. Silver nitrate has a short shelf life, and is not reusable. 

MTCM solves all those problems and is superior to silver nitrate in every respect. Because it acts on carbon-carbon double bonds (pi bonds), it can be used in every separation application where silver nitrate was formerly used--and more--but without any of the problems associated with silver nitrate. Currently, silver nitrate is the only stationary phase media available on the market that targets pi bonds for separation, which means there is a ready need and opportunity to introduce MTCM to the market.