AbstractIn recent years, metal oxides such as titania have been commercially available as chromatographic beds that can potentially be used to achieve novel separations of polar compounds. For example β blockers, which are more often encountered in environmental sciences, have a wide range of polarity, and their basic character leads to difficult sample treatment and separation on conventional silica‐based sorbents. The contribution of titania to the selective analysis of nine β blockers was evaluated in terms of retention mechanisms observed in hydrophilic interaction LC using acetonitrile/water mobile phases with various additives. The mobile phase additives enabled to control the β blocker charge as well as the titania surface charge. Depending on their respective ionic state, various retention mechanisms were identified at low water contents (<40%), including mainly adsorption mixed with hydrophilic interaction LC partition, ion exchange and ion exclusion. An unexpected retention was also observed for high water content and high pH, changing the selectivity of the support.