Over the years, the demands for peak capacity from researchers of a variety of fields has increased drastically, to the point that multi-dimensional liquid-chromatography has become a necessity. The STAMP project’s goal is to obtain a peak capacity of one million through spatial three-dimensional liquid-chromatography (3D-LC). The separations in the three dimensions will occur perpendicularly to each other with all second-dimension and thereafter all third-dimension separations carried out in parallel. This approach will result in a reduced analysis time and a greater efficiency at lower backpressures compared with temporal multi-dimensional liquid chromatography. However, spatial 3D-LC requires structurally complex microfluidic devices that are not commercially available. In the last 20 years, 3D-printing has been developed to the point of representing an attractive manufacturing method, due to the ability of producing very complex and easily editable geometries at low-cost. However, the possibilities of this approach are limited by the resolution of the 3D-printer and by the type of material that can be used. Therefore, our research is focused on titanium. A 3D-printable material with excellent mechanical, chemical and thermal properties. In this presentation, we developed a method to selectively create stationary phases in targeted regions of 3D-printed microfluidic devices. By creating hot and cold zones, we can confine the in situ synthesis of monolithic stationary phases using thermal polymerization. The method has been applied on 3D-printed titanium devices with different complexities. The localized monolithic structures have been used to perform liquid-chromatographic separations of intact proteins, demonstrating good attachment to the wall. Another interesting use was the creation of monolithic frits, in order to pack particles in the 3D-printed device and perform spatial liquid-chromatography.

Towards spatial multi-dimensional liquid chromatography

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.