Pressure-Driven Reverse-Phase Liquid Chromatography Separations in Ordered Nonporous Pillar Array Columns

Malsche de, Wim and Eghbali, Hamed and Clicq, David and Vangelooven, Joris and Gardeniers, Han and Desmet, Gert (2007) Pressure-Driven Reverse-Phase Liquid Chromatography Separations in Ordered Nonporous Pillar Array Columns. Analytical Chemistry, 79 (15). pp. 5915-5926. ISSN 0003-2700

PDF
Restricted to UT campus only: Request a copy
445Kb

Abstract:	Building upon the micromachined column idea proposed by the group of Regnier in 1998, we report on the first high-resolution reversed-phase separations in micromachined pillar array columns under pressure-driven LC conditions. A three component mixture could be separated in 3 s using arrays of nonporous silicon pillars with a diameter of approximately 4.3 μm and an external porosity of 55%. Under slightly retained component conditions (retention factor k‘ = 0.65−1.2), plate heights of about H = 4 μm were obtained at a mobile phase velocity around u = 0.5 mm/s. In reduced terms, such plate heights are as low as hmin = 1. Also, since the flow resistance of the column is much smaller than in a packed column (mainly because of the higher external porosity of the pillar array), the separation impedance of the array was as small as E = 150, i.e., of the same order as the best currently existing monolithic columns. At pH = 3, yielding very low retention factors (k‘ = 0.13 and 0.23), plate heights as low as H = 2 μm were realized, yielding a separation of the three component mixture with an efficiency of N = 4000−5000 plates over a column length of 1 cm. At higher retention factors, significantly larger plate heights were obtained. More experimental work is needed to investigate this more in depth. The study is completed with a discussion of the performance limits of the pillar array column concept in the frame of the current state-of-the-art in microfabrication precision.
Item Type:	Article
Copyright:	© 2007 American Chemical Society
Faculty:	Science and Technology (TNW)
Research Group:	Mesoscale Chemical Systems (MCS)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/74670
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ac070352p
Export this item as:	BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager

Show download statistics for this publication

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Metis ID: 244777