| Title: | A MEMS-enabled portable gas chromatography injection system for trace analysis |
| Author(s): | Thamatam N; Ahn J; Chowdhury M; Sharma A; Gupta P; Marr LC; Nazhandali L; Agah M; |
| Address: | "VT MEMS Lab, The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States. VT MEMS Lab, The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States. CESCA, The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States. VT MEMS Lab, The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, United States. Electronic address: agah@vt.edu" |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.aca.2023.341209 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1873-4324 (Electronic) 0003-2670 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Growing concerns about environmental conditions, public health, and disease diagnostics have led to the rapid development of portable sampling techniques to characterize trace-level volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from various sources. A MEMS-based micropreconcentrator (muPC) is one such approach that drastically reduces the size, weight, and power constraints offering greater sampling flexibility in many applications. However, the adoption of muPCs on a commercial scale is hindered by a lack of thermal desorption units (TDUs) that easily integrate muPCs with gas chromatography (GC) systems equipped with a flame ionization detector (FID) or a mass spectrometer (MS). Here, we report a highly versatile muPC-based, single-stage autosampler-injection unit for traditional, portable, and micro-GCs. The system uses muPCs packaged in 3D-printed swappable cartridges and is based on a highly modular interfacing architecture that allows easy-to-remove, gas-tight fluidic, and detachable electrical connections (FEMI). This study describes the FEMI architecture and demonstrates the FEMI-Autosampler (FEMI-AS) prototype (9.5 cm x 10 cm x 20 cm, approximately 500 gms). The system was integrated with GC-FID, and the performance was investigated using synthetic gas samples and ambient air. The results were contrasted with the sorbent tube sampling technique using TD-GC-MS. FEMI-AS could generate sharp injection plugs ( approximately 240 ms) and detect analytes with concentrations <15 ppb within 20 s and <100 ppt within 20 min of sampling time. With more than 30 detected trace-level compounds from ambient air, the demonstrated FEMI-AS, and the FEMI architecture significantly accelerate the adoption of muPCs on a broader scale" |
| Keywords: | Fluidic connections Gas chromatography Micropreconcentrator Portable thermal desorption unit Trace analysis Volatile organic compounds; |
| Notes: | "PubMed-not-MEDLINEThamatam, Nipun Ahn, Jeonghyeon Chowdhury, Mustahsin Sharma, Arjun Gupta, Poonam Marr, Linsey C Nazhandali, Leyla Agah, Masoud eng Netherlands 2023/05/06 Anal Chim Acta. 2023 Jun 22; 1261:341209. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2023.341209. Epub 2023 Apr 19" |
