Porous Materials for Advanced Microfluidic Applications and Separations
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Porous Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 3819
Special Issue Editor
Interests: separation science; sample extraction; porous monoliths; microfluidics; lab-on-a-disc; low-cost analytical devices; fast prototyping; 3D printing; electrochemical detection
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
I have the pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript to the forthcoming Special Issue in Materials focused on “Porous Materials for Advanced Microfluidic Applications and Separations”.
In the last few decades, porous polymer monoliths and silica monoliths have been widely used as stationary phases for application as separation, extraction and preconcentration columns in both capillary and microfluidic formats. These highly porous materials offer excellent permeability allowing the use of fast flow rates at lower back pressures as compared to particulate columns packed in microfluidic channels. Other important advantages include the wide range of pore sizes and surface chemistries available, as well as the possibility of in situ preparation of monoliths in a specific section of a microfluidic channel or capillary tubing. The latter is rather straightforward when using customized photomasks for photoinitiated polymerization of polymer monoliths, but it can be also achieved by appropriate location of the reaction mixture plug within the microfluidic channel or capillary when preparing silica monoliths by sol-gel methods. The high versatility and functionality that these porous materials offer has been further exploited in the construction of other microfluidic components, i.e., electrokinetic pumps, micromixers, microreactors and electrospray emitters. Ion-permeable membranes and microvalves based on porous polymer monolithic gels have been also successfully integrated in microfluidic channels, with valves commonly based on thermally- and photo-responsive N-isopropylacrylamide hydrogels. Recently, the range of porous monoliths embedded within microfluidic networks has been expanded to include carbon monoliths, which were used as stationary phases for sample extraction and preconcentration.
New developments in the preparation, integration, characterisation and application of porous monolithic materials in microfluidic channels and capillaries, will be discussed in this Special Issue. Full papers, communications, and reviews are all welcome.
Dr. Mercedes Vázquez
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Porous polymer monoliths
- Silica monoliths
- Carbon monoliths
- Porous polymer monolithic gels
- Microfluidics
- Separation columns
- Extraction
- Preconcentration
- Micromixers
- Micropumps
- Microreactors
- Electrospray emitters
- Ion-permeable Membranes
- Microvalves
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