Abstract
A butyl methacrylate (BMA) monolithic column was polymerized in-situ with UV irradiation in an ultraviolet transparent PDMS micro-channel on a homemade micro-fluidic chip. Under the optimized conditions and using a typical polymerization mixture consisting of 75% porogenic solvents and 25% monomers, the BMA monolithic column was obtained as expected. The BET surface area ratio of the BMA monolithic column was 366 m2·g-1. The corresponding SEM images showed that the monolithic column material polymerized in a glass channel was composed of uniform pores and spherical particles with diameters ranging from 3 to 5 μm. The promethazine–luminal–potassium ferricyanide chemiluminescence system was selected for testing the capability of the column. A flow injection analytical technique–chemiluminescence (FIA–CL) system on the microfluidic chip with a BMA monolithic column pretreatment unit was established to determine promethazine. Trace promethazine was enriched by the BMA monolithic column, with more than a 10-fold average enrichment ratio. The proposed method has a linear response concentration range of 1.0×10-8 - 1.0×10-6g·mL-1 and the detection limit was 1.6×10-9g·mL-1.
Highlights
Sample pretreatment is one of the most important steps in an analytical process
In order to test the compatibility of the monolithic column in the microchip analytical system, the promethazine-luminol-ferricyanide chemiluminescence system was selected to test the capability of the butyl methacrylate (BMA) monolithic column combined with the flow injection analytical technique (FIA)
Research in integrated microfluidic devices has expanded to include sample preparation, fluid handling, microreactors and separation systems etc, which have been applied in medical analysis, environmental monitoring, biochemical analysis, and microchemistry
Summary
Sample pretreatment is one of the most important steps in an analytical process. Recently, microfluidic systems have been investigated extensively for biological and chemical analysis because miniaturization requires smaller samples and offers lower reagent consumption and costs and higher throughput and performance. Compared to traditional chromatography columns, the recently developed monolithic columns prepared in-situ have many advantages such as easy preparation and modification, low operational pressure, high resolution, large capacity, good permeability, fast mass transfer properties and good stability [5,6,7] These monolithic columns can be used as stationary phases for capillary electro-chromatography and micro-column high performance liquid chromatography (μ-HPLC), and as matrices for sample pretreatment and enzyme reactors. Due to their simplicity, speed and effectiveness, monoliths are especially suited for integration into microfluidic devices, so it is not surprising that monolithic columns have attracted considerable attention and have been applied widely in micro-fluidic chip analytical systems in recent years [8]. It was demonstrated that the butyl methacrylate monolithic column prepared in-situ was highly effective as a pretreatment unit on a microchip to separate and concentrate some practical samples
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