Microfluidic Precision Manufacture of High Performance LiquidChromatographic Microspheres

A key bottleneck in developing chromatographic material isthe chemically entangled control of morphology, pore structure, andmaterial chemistry, which holds back precision material manufacturein order to pursue advanced separation performance. In this work, aprecision manufacture strategy based on droplet microfluidics wasdeveloped, for production of highly efficient chromatographicmicrospheres with independent control over particle morphology, porestructure and material chemistry. The droplet-synthesizedmicrospheres display extremely narrow particle size distribution(CV<3%), enabling a 100% production yield due to completeelimination of sieving steps. More importantly, the size of the droplet-synthesized microspheres is freely adjustable without the need for re-optimizing chemical recipes or reaction conditions. The resultingmaterials exhibit excellent separation efficiencies, achieving areduced plate height of hmin=1.67. This precision manufacture strategyalso allows for flexible pore design and continuous pore sizeadjustment across three orders of magnitudes, providing a novelvehicle for resolution fine-tuning targeting protein separation. Besidestraditional silica, organic-inorganic hybrid silica, zirconia, and titaniamicrospheres can also be precisely synthesized on the same platform,supporting various separation applications and operating conditions.Powered by precision manufacture, super-throughput production, andversatile chemistry, the high-performance droplet-synthesizedseparation material will pave the way towards green and precisionchromatographic industry.