Portable and field deployable analytical instruments are attractive in many fields including medical diagnostics, where point of care and on-site diagnostics systems capable of providing rapid quantitative results have the potential to vastly improve the productivity and the quality of medical care. Isotachophoresis (ITP) is a well known electrophoretic separation technique previously demonstrated as suitable for miniaturization in microfluidic chip format (chip-ITP). In this work, a purpose-designed ITP chip compatible with a commercial end-used targeted microfluidic system was used to study different injection protocols and to evaluate the effect of the length of the separation channel on the analytical performance. The in-house ITP chips were made from Corning glass and compared to the commercial DNA chip for the ITP separation of anions from the hydrodynamic injection of human serum. Using the in-house ITP chip the isotachophoretic step of lactate from human serum was approximately two times longer. The results of this research suggested that microfluidic ITP with indirect fluorescence detection is a viable technique for separation of organic acids in human serum samples, especially when a chip with suitable design is used.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	isotachophoresis, microfluidic chip, fluorescence, indirect detection, carboxylic acids, serum
Research Division:	Chemical Sciences
Research Group:	Analytical Chemistry
Research Field:	Separation Science
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding Knowledge in the Chemical Sciences
UTAS Author:	Smejkal, P (Dr Petr Smejkal)
UTAS Author:	Breadmore, MC (Professor Michael Breadmore)
UTAS Author:	Guijt, RM (Dr Rosanne Guijt)
UTAS Author:	Macka, M (Professor Mirek Macka)
ID Code:	83167
Year Published:	2012
Web of Science® Times Cited:	14
Deposited By:	Austn Centre for Research in Separation Science
Deposited On:	2013-03-04
Last Modified:	2014-08-11
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