Issue 4, 2013

One-step packing of anti-voltage photonic crystals into microfluidic channels for ultra-fast separation of amino acids and peptides

Abstract

Packing of stable and crack-free photonic crystals (PCs) into micro channels is a prerequisite for ideal separation, but often takes several days and many steps, including assembly and immobilization. This work was dedicated to finding a fast, one-step solution. Simply by heating and blowing away the vapor, the packing of silica PCs into micro channels by classic evaporation-induced assembly was greatly accelerated and could unite the immobilization into one step. An apt method was thus established, which was able to pack 2 cm PCs into microfluidic channels in 15 min, saving a lot of time. The packed PCs showed no evident cracks along the borders of their continuous domain, therefore they are capable of withstanding an anti-electrical field at 2000 V cm−1 for 5 h and storage in water for 2 months. This enables ultra-fast separation of amino acids along a 2.5 mm PC in 4 s, and peptides along a 10 mm PC in 12 s. The separation was highly efficient and reproducible, with a 300 nm plate height and 0.24%–0.35% relative standard deviation of migration time. This one-step approach is extendable to other gelling particles, and the resulted stable, crack-free PCs would have large potential in ultra-fast separation of other analytes.

Graphical abstract: One-step packing of anti-voltage photonic crystals into microfluidic channels for ultra-fast separation of amino acids and peptides

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 Jun 2012
Accepted
27 Nov 2012
First published
28 Nov 2012

Lab Chip, 2013,13, 706-713

One-step packing of anti-voltage photonic crystals into microfluidic channels for ultra-fast separation of amino acids and peptides

T. Liao, Z. Guo, J. Li, M. Liu and Y. Chen, Lab Chip, 2013, 13, 706 DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40720E

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