(109f) Minimizing Axial Dispersion in Liquid Chromatography Using Microfabricated Pillar Array Columns

The present contribution aims at illustrating and demonstrating how micro-machining technology can give a boost to High Performance Liquid Chromato-graphy (HPLC). Currently, HPLC is routinely used in nearly every chemical analysis lab. Despite its high degree of maturity, the technique however suffers from serious performance limitations when faced to the complex samples that need to be separated to solve the current state-of-the-art problems in the biological and pharmaceutical research (e.g., proteomics and metabolomics), the food and environmental analysis, etc…..

The currently used packed bed HPLC columns are clearly underachieving because of the packing disorder and the concomitant large degree of band broadening. To solve this packing disorder problem, the present contribution will focus on the possibilities of advanced photolithographic etching techniques such as the Bosch-process to produce perfectly ordered porous support columns with optimized hydrodynamic shape and optimized external porosity.

At the conference, rapid multi-component separations and the possibility to achieve very high separation efficiencies in pressure-driven LC will be demonstrated. The possibility to combine the pillar array technology with the latest sol-gel synthesis methods to produce monolithic silica columns with increased structural homogeneity will be discussed as well.