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For this work, two different plastic microfluidic devices are designed and fabricated for applications in high-throughput residue analysis of food contaminants and drug screening of small-molecule libraries. Microfluidic networks on copolyester and poly(dimethylsiloxane) substrates are fabricated by silicon template imprinting and capillary molding techniques. The first device is developed to perform affinity capture, concentration, and direct identification of targeted compounds using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Poly(vinylidene fluoride) membranes sandwiched between the imprinted copolyester microchannels in an integrated platform provide continuous affinity dialysis and concentration of a reaction mixture containing aflatoxin B1 antibody and aflatoxins. The second microfluidic device is composed of microchannels on the poly(dimethylsiloxane) substrates. The device is designed to perform miniaturized ultrafiltration of affinity complexes of phenobarbital antibody and barbiturates, including the sequential loading, washing, and dissociation steps. These microfabricated devices not only significantly reduce dead volume and sample consumption but also increase the detection sensitivity by at least 1-2 orders of magnitude over those reported previously. Improvements in detection sensitivity are attributed to analyte preconcentration during the affinity purification step, limited analyte dilution in the microdialysis junction, minimal sample loss, and the amenability of ESI-MS to nanoscale sample flow rates.
Jiang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.