Importance of material matching in the calibration of asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation: material specificity and nanoparticle surface coating effects on retention time

Asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation (AF4) coupled with dynamic light scattering or multiangle light scattering detectors is a promising technique for the size-based separation of colloidal particles (nano- and submicron scale) and the online determination of the particle size of the separated fractions in aqueous suspensions. In most cases, the applications of these detectors are problematic due to the material-specific properties of the analyte that results in erroneous calculations, and as an alternative, different nanoparticle size standards are required to properly calibrate the size-based retention in AF4. The availability of nanoparticle size standards in different materials is limited, and this deviation from ideal conditions of retention is mainly due to material-specific and particle coating-specific membrane–particle interactions. Here, we present an experimental method on the applicability of polystyrene nanoparticles (PS NP) as standard for AF4 calibration and compare with gold nanoparticle (Au NP) standards having different nominal sizes and surface functionalities.