Micro Gas Chromatographic Columns with Metal-Organic Frameworks as Stationary Phase

In this paper, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with different pore windows are coated on the inner surface of the channels of the micro gas chromatographic column (μGCC) to separate light hydrocarbons. The μGCC is fabricated by micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technique. The MOFs are ZIF-8 with 0.34 nm pore windows and UIO-66 with 0.84 nm and 0.74 nm pore windows. It indicates that alkanes C1-C6 are well separated by using the μGCC with 2 m length. Importantly, the resolution of the methane and ethane is as high as 3.07, which is 2.74 times of state of the art, and it could be attributed to the molecular sieving effect of the combination of the multiple pore windows. Meanwhile, the separation efficiency of C4 also reaches 10480 plates.