title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Living Biosystems, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, PR China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.forename: Zhengpeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Jincheng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Meirong
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000596:Amino Acids / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D010455:Peptides / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D017785:Photons; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D010455:Peptides; D012822:Silicon Dioxide