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Lab on a Chip

Microfluidic & nanofluidic technologies for chemistry, physics, biology, and bioengineering



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Paper

Lab Chip, 2008, 8, 1819 - 1828, DOI: 10.1039/b811599k

Features of a micro-gas chromatograph equipped with enrichment device and microchip plasma emission detection (PED) for air monitoring

Bart Tienpont, Frank David, Wim Witdouck, Dries Vermeersch, Herbert Stoeri and Pat Sandra

A field portable gas chromatograph (GC) was constructed allowing the enrichment of organic solutes from air samples on a miniaturized chemical trap and the subsequent gas chromatographic analysis on a resistively heated capillary column. The heart of the system is an integrated chip-based plasma emission detector (PED). As a non-selective detector, the sensitivity is similar to that of a flame ionization detector (FID). The detector shows good selectivity for phosphorus, sulfur and chlorine-containing compounds with relative selectivities of ca. 5 × 105 gP gC-1, 50 gS gC-1 and 102 gCl gC-1. The lifetime of the plasma chip under air monitoring conditions exceeded 3000 analyses.

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