Development of Microsystems Useful for Industrial Applications in Environmental Monitoring

Abstract

In the field of analytical chemistry and its instrumentation, microsystem technology has been most remarkable, because it leads to on-site and real-time monitoring, high-speed and high-throughput analysis, resulting from a small sample volume, rapid operation procedure and a small measuring device space. Although atmospheric environment has a lot of pollutants, a few researchers deal with gas phase since most of these researchers have been proposed for analyzing liquid samples. Because of large differences between physical parameters of gas and liquid phases, such as viscosity and compressibility, the control of a stable gas–liquid equilibrium system in a microchannel was relatively difficult. If the chemicals in the environment can be easily taken into microsystems, their application to sample pretreatment microchips and downsized mass spectrometer system will spread further. After analyzing simple gas–liquid equilibrium system on microchip, for example, a gas–liquid contacting pretreatment microsystems via porous material was described, and several novel gas, liquid, and solid sample pretreatment methods were developed by utilizing mass transfer microsystems from gas, liquid, and solid phases to liquid phase, respectively.