Engineering an integrated system with a high pressure polymeric microfluidic chip coupled to liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) for the analysis of abused drugs

Recent advances in microfluidics for single-cell functional proteomics

“…73 Likewise, Chen et al also proposed a high pressure-resistant and 3D-printed multilayered microfluidic chip that could operate at a back pressure of 13.4 MPa in the LC-MS system. 74 The interfacing chip had two inlets, where one linked to LC and the other for particle filling, and one outlet connecting to a mass spectrometer (Fig. 2d(ii)).…”

Emerging 3D printing technologies and methodologies for microfluidic development

“…81,82 There was a method using an FDM printer by which the glass was heated to 1165 C to melt, followed by extruding the molten onto a crucible. 81 The temperature of the crucible and the printer nozzles was set at 1040 C and 1010 C, respectively, whereas the temperature of the print annealer was set at 480 C. Gravity spontaneously drove glass ow from the Limited to photopolymers 33 A 3D printed a microuidic gradient generator (250 mm wide) 31 A DLP-SLA that could achieve a small void size in the x-y plane, allowing the fabrication of true (really tiny) microuidic channels (18 mm by 20 mm) 21 Low-cost microuidicsenabled functional 3D printing 31 Usually do not support multi-material printing 34 A wearable sensor containing microdialysis probe to human tissue metabolite 38 A 3D printed microuidic device for transdermal drug delivery 36 A microuidic chip for drug dissolution assays 37 A microuidic device coupled to LC-MS 39…”

“…Using stereolithography 3D printing, Chen et al produced a reusable and robust microfluidic chip that could resist high pressure when coupled to liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) for the determination of components in biological samples. 39 The coupling of LC-MS to microfluidic devices has become popular because it allows rapid data collection due to the micro scale. However, many microfluidic devices that had been previously designed were still limited by a high back pressure generated from pushing mobile phases through a particle-packed column, even at slow flow rates such as nanoliters per min.…”

“…In their work, Chen et al were able to design and 3D-print a microfluidic device in clear resin with a 1 mm diameter and 3.8 cm length microchannel, and three inlets with dimensions that perfectly matched the dimensions of commercial threads to avoid any leakage during flow under high pressure. 39 As shown in Fig. 2E, one inlet linked the microfluidic device to the LC for injecting the sample, another inlet linked the device to the MS for analyzing the compound, and a third inlet was for particle filling.…”

“…This microchip was also able to hold a high pressure of 134 bar, a high flow rate of 0.035 mL min −1 , and a 3.8 cm particle-filled column with no particle loss or leakage. 39 In addition, it allowed a shorter equilibrium time of 30 min, which is usually longer with other LC-MS systems that can only work with low flow rates (<10 μL min −1 ). The authors also confirmed the LC mobile phases do not dissolve the resin that makes up the chip.…”