Technology towards a lab-on-a-chip GC for environmental research.

20世纪分析科学的一项重大成功是开发了在高度复杂的混合物中以及在万亿分之一及以下水平上检测痕量化学物质的技术。这一领域的技术发展主要集中在敏感性和特异性问题上，往往以牺牲单位成本、规模或操作便利性为代价。21世纪的一个主要挑战是开发小型化的分离、检测和传感器技术，并将它们结合在一起，以低成本、完全自主的方式形成高度特定的测量技术，同时又具有当今实验室仪器的所有功能。通过减小尺寸和功率，仪器可以在现场和不一定有电源的地方使用。本项目涉及开发生产低功率高灵敏度气相色谱仪（GC）所需的基础技术。气相色谱是一种主要的分析方法，在整个环境科学中用于检测和识别空气、水和土壤中的化学物质。目前市售仪器的尺寸和功耗使得它们几乎完全在实验室中使用，不能在现场携带。本项目开发的核心技术是在碱金属氧化物玻璃单体上湿蚀刻微米级的微制造气相色谱装置。这就是所谓的芯片实验室技术。这是一种非常新的工程可能性，由于对芯片实验室微流体的兴趣激增，目前正在生物化学和制药应用中得到积极开发。该技术尚未应用于气体基质，因此该项目是微流体研究和开发的最新技术。通过使用平面芯片实验室，目标是将能量消耗从约5 x 107 J的电流值降低到约500 J /有效地从需要市电的2-3kW设备移动到使用50-100W的峰值功率的设备。在这些能量水平上，太阳能/风能充电的设备操作变得可行，并且与主电源断开连接，这是非常远程监控的圣杯，成为可能。

A major analytical science success of the 20th Century has been the development of technology to detect trace level chemicals in highly complex mixtures and at the parts per trillion level and below. Technology development in this area has been primarily focussed on issues of sensitivity and specificity often at the expense of unit cost, size or operational ease. A major challenge for the 21st Century is to develop miniaturised separation, detection and sensor technologies and harness them together to form highly specific measurement techniques in forms that are low cost, fully autonomous and yet which have all the capabilities of today's laboratory based instruments. By reducing size and power allows instruments to be used in the field and in locations where mains electricity may not necessarily be available. This project is concerned with developing fundamental technology needed to produce a low power but high sensitivity gas chromatograph (GC). GC is a major analytical method and is used throughout environmental science to detect and identify chemicals in air, water and soils. The size and power consumption of current commercially available instruments is such that they are used almost exclusively in the laboratory and are not field portable. The core technologies to be developed in this project are micro fabricated gas chromatography devices wet-etched at the micron level onto alkali metal oxide glass monoliths. This is a so-called lab-on-a-chip technology. This is a very new engineering possibility and is one which is now being activity exploited for biochemical and pharmaceutical applications through the explosion of interest in lab-on-a-chip microfluidics. The technology has yet to be applied to gaseous matrices and this project therefore sits as state of the art with respect to microfluidic research and development. Through the use of a planar lab-on-a-chip, a target is to reduce energy consumption from current values of the order ~5 x 107 J, to around 500 J. / Effectively to move from a 2-3kW device requiring mains electricity to a device using peak powers of the order 50-100W. At these energy levels device operation from solar / wind charging becomes feasible and disconnection from mains electricity, a holy grail for very remote monitoring, becomes possible.