Methacrylate monolithic stationary phases for gradient elution separations in microfluidic devices

Methacrylate monolithic stationary phases were produced in fused-silica chips by UV initiation. Poly(butyl methacrylate-co-ethylene dimethacrylate) (BMA) and poly(lauryl methacrylate-co-ethylene dimethacrylate) (LMA) monoliths containing 30, 35 and 40% monomers were evaluated for the separation of peptides under gradient conditions. The peak capacity was used as an objective tool for the evaluation of the separation performance. LMA monoliths of the highest density gave the highest peak capacities (≈40) in gradients of 15 min and all LMA monoliths gave higher peak capacities than the BMA monoliths with the same percentage of monomers. Increasing the gradient duration to 30 min did not increase the peak capacity significantly. However, running fast (5 min) gradients provides moderate peak capacities (≈20) in a short time. Due to the system dead volume of 1 μL and the low bed volume of the chip, early eluting peptides migrated over a significant part of the column during the dwell time under isocratic conditions. It was shown that this could explain an increased band broadening on the monolithic stationary phase materials used. The effect is stronger with BMA monoliths, which partly explains the inferior performance of this material with respect to peak capacity. The configuration of the connections on the chip appeared to be critical when fast analyses were performed at pressures above 20 bar.