Effect of thermal desorption kinetics on vapor injection peak irregularities by a microscale gas chromatography preconcentrator.

Microscale gas chromatography (μGC) is an emerging analytical technique for in situ analysis and on-site monitoring of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in moderately complex mixtures. One of the critical subcomponents in a μGC system is a microfabricated preconcentrator (μ-preconcentrator), which enables detection of compounds existing in indoor/ambient air at low (~sub ppb) concentrations by enhancing their signals. The prevailing notion is that elution peak broadening and tailing phenomena resulting from undesirable conditions of a microfabricated separation column (μ-column) are the primary sources of poor chromatographic resolution. However, previous experimental results indicate that the resolution degradation still remains observed for a μ-column integrated with other μGC subcomponents even after setting optimal separation conditions. In this work, we obtain the evidence that the unoptimized μ-preconcentrator vapor release/injection performance significantly contributes to decrease the fidelity of μGC analysis using our state-of-the-art passive preconcentrator microdevice. The vapor release/injection performance is highly affected by the kinetics of the thermal desorption of compounds trapped in the microdevice. Decreasing the heating rate by 20% from the optimal rate of 90 °Cs(-1) causes a 340% increase in peak tailing as well as 70% peak broadening (30% peak height reduction) to the microscale vapor injection process.