A paper by ME doctoral candidate Sung Jin Kim has been featured as the cover image of the most recent volume of Lab on a Chip, a journal publishing significant and original work related to miniaturization at the micro- and nano-scale across a variety of disciplines.
His paper is entitled “Microfabricated thermal modulator for comprehensive two-dimensional micro gas chromatography (GC×GC): design, thermal modeling, and preliminary testing.” Kim is a student of ME Associate Professor Katsuo Kurabayashi.
In the paper, Kim discusses GC×GC, a powerful analytical technique used to separate and detect the components of complex mixtures of volatile organic compounds. By focusing and re-injecting eluting mixture components, a thermal modulator placed between two separation columns in a GC×GC system plays a critical role in enhancing the resolution and the selectivity of analytes.
As part of their efforts to develop a μGC×μGC prototype, Kim and Kurabayashi have designed, fabricated, and operated a two-stage, microfabricated thermal modulator (μTM) using MEMS technology. Preliminary tests of the μTM have demonstrated enhanced sensitivity and resolution in separating mixtures of alkanes and ketones.
