A Micropump-Driven High-Speed MEMS Gas Chromatography System

We report (1) the integration of the first functioning MEMS gas chromatography system ( μGC) featuring a micropump, a micro-column, and a micro-chemiresistor sensor array; and (2) experimental demonstration of the state-of-the-art multi-vapor gas separation and detection. In particular, we report the best GC analysis data from the first micropump-driven μGC system to date: the separation and detection of 11 volatile organic compounds (VOC)'s within only 78 seconds while consuming only 15.1 mW of power within a small volume of 0.5 cc. We also report the use of temperature programming (TP) of the separation column for fast analysis, which shortened the analysis time from 78 seconds to 24 seconds while maintaining gas analysis resolution.