High resolution microfabricated gas chromatography column with porous silicon acting as support

In this paper, a micro-gas chromatography (GC) column with embedded micro-pillars was developed for gas chromatography. These micro-pillars positioned in the channel can reduce effective width and increase overall surface area of column. Moreover, a layer of porous silicon acting as support was produced on the channels and micro-pillars wall, which are able to coat more stationary phase and increase its thickness, leading to higher separation resolution. Therefore, the proposed column had higher sample capacity as the overall surface area of the channels was much larger than that of the column without porous silicon. The results indicated that the proposed column separated a environmental sample mixture of 6 compounds within 65 s, achieved a high resolution with these adjacent chromatography peaks separated completely and a separation efficiency of 10,000 plates/m, and eluted highly symmetrical peaks.