There is growing realization that miniaturization and integration of analytical systems could revolutionize life science research by enabling 10,000 to 100,000 experimental measurements a day. At issue today is how this will be done. This problem, in the case of chromatographic separations, through microfabrication of both chromatography columns and some, or all of the components that drive the process. preliminary studies have shown that chromatography and electrophoresis columns may be made in which i) the entire column is fabricated as a single piece, ii) """"""""particles"""""""" are immobilized at the column walls, iii) stable beds are formed with the """"""""particles"""""""" touching, iv) all channels in the column bed are the same size, v) all space in the column is controlled down to 1000, vi) column efficiency is equal or superior to conventional columns, and vii) the fabrication technology used to create these columns can produce hundreds of columns at a time on a single chip. The broad objective of the proposed research is to optimize these new miniaturized chromatography columns and explore the possibility that they can be incorporated into parallel processing, multidimensional analytical systems. Specific column design issues being examined are i) the utility of new, very high aspect ratio etching technology to produce deeper channels, ii) the relationship between the number of channels across a bed, monolith geometry, channel width and separation efficiency, and iii) stationary phases with enhancement surface area. System issues being addressed are the design and fabrication of i) all the ancillary components necessary to achieve sampling, mixing, mobile phase formulation and gradient elution on a chip; ii) multiple analytical systems on a chip which carry out different separations or measure different phenomena, iii) systems necessary to rapidly introduce large numbers of sample onto chips and vi) high throughput screening systems. These collocated monolith support structure (COMOSS) columns are a significant advance in efforts directed at large scale parallel processing in analytical biochemistry.
| Xiong, L; Regnier, F E (2001) Channel-specific coatings on microfabricated chips. J Chromatogr A 924:165-76 |
