Abstract
Microfluidic chips coupling with mass spectrometry (MS) will be of great significance to the development of relevant instruments involving chemical and bio-chemical analysis, drug detection, food and environmental applications and so on. In our previous works, we proposed two types of microfluidic electrospray ionization (ESI) chip coupling with MS: the two-phase flow focusing (FF) ESI microfluidic chip and the corner-integrated ESI emitter, respectively. However the pretreatment module integrated with these ESI emitters is still a challenging problem. In this paper, we concentrated on integrating the solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) module with our previous proposed on-chip ESI emitters; the fabrication processes of such SPME module are fully compatible with our previous proposed ESI emitters based on the multi-layer soft lithography. We optimized the structure of the integrated chip and characterized its performance using standard samples. Furthermore, we verified its abilities of salt removal, extraction of multiple analytes and separation through on-chip elution using mimic biological urine spiked with different drugs. The results indicated that our proposed integrated module with ESI emitters is practical and effective for real biological sample pretreatment and MS detection.
Highlights
The microfluidic chip has the ability to integrate basic operation units in the field of chemistry and biology such as sample preparation, reaction, separation and detection into a single chip with few square centimeters; the basic characteristics and the significant advantages of such so-called lab-on-chip technology are the flexible combination and scale integration of functional module on the tiny platform [1,2]
In our previous works [11,12,13], we proposed two types of microfluidic electrospray ionization (ESI) chip coupling with mass spectrometry (MS): the two-phase flow focusing (FF) ESI microfluidic chip and the cornerintegrated ESI emitter, respectively
The fabrication process of microfluidic solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) module integrated with FF ESI emitter is as same as integrated-corner ESI emitter
Summary
The microfluidic chip has the ability to integrate basic operation units in the field of chemistry and biology such as sample preparation, reaction, separation and detection into a single chip with few square centimeters; the basic characteristics and the significant advantages of such so-called lab-on-chip technology are the flexible combination and scale integration of functional module on the tiny platform [1,2]. LPME in microfluidic chips is used to transfer substances from one phase to another by the solubility or distribution ratio of the two phases which produce stable laminar flow in the microchannel; SPME is a sample preparation technology that a solvent (aqueous or organic) is used for adsorption and elution of the sample It is based on different distribution coefficient [21] in solid phase and solution. Coupling the SPME module with the integrated ESI emitter is a dead volume free configuration; and secondly, we focus on the problem of eliminating salts and separation of multiple analytes in the complex sample matrix under the best elution conditions. The application prospect of such on-chip SPME module coupling with ESI MS is expected to be widespread, especially in food and medicine analysis in the future
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