There has been an increasing interest in fast gas chromatography because of the growing demand for high throughput screening of food, pharmaceutical, environmental, and forensic samples. The separation column is the heart of a gas chromatograph that primarily determines the performance of a GC, and in this regard micromachined silicon-glass chips have been a focus of several research studies. Herein, we report the fabrication and separation performance of room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) functionalized semi-packed columns for high-speed and efficient gas chromatographic separation of a mixture of organic compounds. A 1 m long, 240 µm deep, 190 µm wide column with embedded circular micropillars of 20 µm in diameter and 40 µm post spacing was fabricated using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. A number of RTILs were deposited inside the channels of the SPCs, and these columns were tested for gas chromatographic separation of a mixture of 15 hazardous pollutants, including BTEX, nitroaromatics, halobenzenes, and naphthalene. The separation was achieved in 3 minutes with a separation efficiency of approximately 3000 plates/m. The separation selectivity was greatly varied by changing the RTIL. This work highlights the potential of RTILs to be used as excellent stationary phases for SPCs, thereby dramatically expanding the range of complex mixtures that could be analyzed using a micro gas chromatograph.

Ionic liquid functionalization of semi-packed columns for high-speed gas chromatography

254th National Meeting (2017)

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