An all-glass based micro gas chromatographic column for light hydrocarbon separation with HKUST-1 as stationary phase

Yuchen Zhu; Jian Xu; Di Zhang; Aodong Zhang; Boxin Chen; Bin Zhao; Xuhong Qian; Ya Cheng; Fei Feng

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2023.342057

An all-glass based micro gas chromatographic column for light hydrocarbon separation with HKUST-1 as stationary phase

Anal Chim Acta. 2024 Jan 25:1287:342057. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2023.342057. Epub 2023 Nov 23.

Authors

Yuchen Zhu¹, Jian Xu², Di Zhang³, Aodong Zhang², Boxin Chen¹, Bin Zhao³, Xuhong Qian⁴, Ya Cheng⁵, Fei Feng⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China; Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
² XXL-The Extreme Optoelectromechanics Laboratory, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China.
⁵ XXL-The Extreme Optoelectromechanics Laboratory, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China. Electronic address: ya.cheng@siom.ac.cn.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China; Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China. Electronic address: fengfei507@mail.sim.ac.cn.

PMID: 38182335
DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2023.342057

Abstract

Background: The gas chromatography column is one of the key components of the gas chromatograph and typically be miniaturized using micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technology. Due to the limited area of the Si wafer, the column length of micro gas chromatographic column (μGCC) is usually much smaller than that of commercial chromatographic columns. Therefore, it is always difficult to use μGCCs to separate small molecule gas components such as light hydrocarbons. More importantly, the heterogeneous microchannel surface formed by silicon glass bonding causes uneven stationary phase coating, further preventing the improvement of separation performance.

Results: In this paper, a novel all-glass based μGCC with 2 m length for the separation of light hydrocarbons is proposed. The microchannels of the μGCC were directly prepared in the glass substrate by ultrafast laser assisted chemical etching (ULAE). The all-glass microchannels make the coating of the hydrophilic metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) stationary phase continuously because of the homogeneous material composition. Therefore, a widely used copper based hydrophilic MOFs HKUST-1 was used as stationary phase for coating and testing. The test results show that the μGCC which is an open tubular column can realize the baseline separation of light hydrocarbons at 100 °C. And the resolution of difficult separated compounds, methane and ethane, can reach 12.98, which is 201.86 % higher than the silica-based monolithic capillary column in the relevant research. The resolution of ethane and ethylene reaches 6.81 at 120 °C.

Significance: The μGCC fabricated by ULAE method is composed of all-glass and has the uniform stationary phase coating because of the homogeneous microchannel surface which greatly improve the separation performance, resulting in a large resolution for methane and ethane. The all-glass μGCC has broad application prospects in light hydrocarbon separation.

Keywords: Glass substrate; HKUST-1; Light hydrocarbon separation; Metal-organic frameworks; Micro gas chromatographic column.