[Zurück]

N. Kaun, S. Kulka, J Baena, P. Schade, D Moss, M. Vellekoop, B. Lendl:
"Lab-on-a-chip devices as enabling technology for novel(bio)chemical studies using mid-IR synchrotron radiation";
Poster: ESF/LESC-PESC Exploratory Workshop: Recent Progress and Future Perspectives, Triest; 26.09.2004 - 30.09.2004.

This presentation deals with the design and first results obtained with dedicated chip based devices for rapid mixing of solutions for the study of chemical reactions and the electrophoretic separation of mixtures using mid-IR synchrotron radiation. The developed micromixer allows highly reproducible and fast mixing of two or three liquids in micro-channels. Due to the small overall dimensions of the channels (10-15 µm) the diffusion distance is short which results in fast diffusion based mixing. Following the equation t=D/L (t: time required for complete mixing, L: characteristic diffusion length, D. Diffusion constant) reduction of L, as made possible by the chip design and the use of synchrotron light (smallmeasuring spot) allows to increase the time resolution to a maximum. The chemical reactions can then be followed on-chip in real time. A second advantage resulting form the miniaturisation is the reduction of sample volume required for measurement. The combination of the small measuring spot with the chip-design makes this development a promising tool for the study of many different biochemical systems. Furthermore, we introduce infrared spectrometry as a novel molecule specific detection technique in chip based capillary electrophoresis (CE).. A CE microchip with mid-IR detection has been designed which allows to separate mixtures of analytes (inorganic species, proteins, etc.) and to record their IR spectra after separation. The use of FT-IR as a detection method in CE on a chip allows to detect specific molecular features like the secondary structure of a protein and is therefore a suitable complementary method to standard detection methods.