title: A high-throughput solid-phase extraction microchip combined with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry for rapid determination of trace heavy metals in natural water.
abstract: Herein, a hyphenated system combining a high-throughput solid-phase extraction (htSPE) microchip with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for rapid determination of trace heavy metals was developed. Rather than performing multiple analyses in parallel for the enhancement of analytical throughput, we improved the processing speed for individual samples by increasing the operation flow rate during SPE procedures. To this end, an innovative device combining a micromixer and a multi-channeled extraction unit was designed. Furthermore, a programmable valve manifold was used to interface the developed microchip and ICP-MS instrumentation in order to fully automate the system, leading to a dramatic reduction in operation time and human error. Under the optimized operation conditions for the established system, detection limits of 1.64-42.54 ng L(-1) for the analyte ions were achieved. Validation procedures demonstrated that the developed method could be satisfactorily applied to the determination of trace heavy metals in natural water. Each analysis could be readily accomplished within just 186 s using the established system. This represents, to the best of our knowledge, an unprecedented speed for the analysis of trace heavy metal ions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Tsung-Ting
authors.initials: TT
authors.lastname: Shih
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Cheng-Chuan
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yu-Ting
authors.initials: YT
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yi-An
authors.initials: YA
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ping-Hung
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yu-Chen
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Chuang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Electronic address: ycsun@mx.nthu.edu.tw.
authors.forename: Yuh-Chang
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Sun
keywords: Automation; High-throughput solid phase extraction; Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry; Micromixer; Multi-channeled