A gravity driven micro flow injection wetting film extraction system on a polycarbonate chip

A micro flow injection wetting film liquid–liquid extraction system has been developed for trace analyte concentration and on-chip detection. A hydrophobic channel fabricated on a polycarbonate chip was used to support the wetting film, and hydrostatic pressure generated by the difference in liquid levels was employed to drive the fluids. Sequential injection of segments of aqueous sample solution and organic solvent was conducted by switching the sample- or solvent-containing vials to an on-chip sampling probe, and detection was performed by a co-focused, laser induced fluorescence detector. Using butyl rhodamine B as a model analyte and butanol as the solvent for both film-coating and elution, various experimental conditions such as hydrostatic pressure, coating time, channel length, sampling volume, and sample acidity were investigated. Under optimized conditions, a 24-fold enrichment factor was obtained with the consumption of about 3 μL sample solution, and a detection limit (3σ) of 6.0 × 10−9 M butyl rhodamine B was achieved at the sampling rate of 19 h−1. Eleven consecutive runs of a 1.0 × 10−5 M butyl rhodamine B solution produced a relative standard deviation of 1.5% for the detected fluorescence signals.