[ACIE] Assoc. Prof. Bo Zhang published a paper entitled “Microfluidic Precision Manufacture of High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Microspheres”

Title: Microfluidic Precision Manufacture of High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Microspheres

Authors: Kaiyue Sun, Juxing Zeng, Ya Liu, Zhuoheng Zhou, Jikai Chen, Jiawei Chen, Xiangyu Huang, Fan Gao, Xin Wang, Xin Zhang, Xiaofei Wang, Sebastiaan Eeltink, Bo Zhang*

Abstract: A key bottleneck in developing chromatographic material is the chemically entangled control of morphology,pore structure, and material chemistry, which holds back precision material manufacture in order to pursue advancedseparation performance. In this work, a precision manufacture strategy based on droplet microfluidics was developed,for production of highly efficient chromatographic microspheres with independent control over particle morphology,pore structure and material chemistry. The droplet-synthesized microspheres display extremely narrow particle sizedistribution (CV < 3 %), enabling a 100 % production yield due to complete elimination of sieving steps. Moreimportantly, the size of the droplet-synthesized microspheres is freely adjustable without the need for re-optimizingchemical recipes or reaction conditions. The resulting materials exhibit excellent separation efficiencies, achieving areduced plate height of hmin = 1.67. This precision manufacture strategy also allows for flexible pore design andcontinuous pore size adjustment across three orders of magnitudes, providing a novel vehicle for resolution fine-tuningtargeting protein separation. Besides traditional silica, organic–inorganic hybrid silica, zirconia, and titania microspherescan also be precisely synthesized on the same platform, supporting various separation applications and operatingconditions. Powered by precision manufacture, super-throughput production, and versatile chemistry, the high-performance droplet-synthesized separation material will pave the way towards green and precision chromatographicindustry.

Full-Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202418642