Precolumn diastereomerization and micellar electrokinetic chromatography on a plastic microchip: Rapid chiral analysis of amino acids

Precolumn derivatization and chiral separation of DL‐amino acids based on diastereomerization have been performed on an integrated poly(dimethylsiloxane) microchip. Diastereomeric derivatives were formed in a microfabricated precolumn reactor by the reaction of amino acid enantiomers with o‐phthaldialdehyde/2,3,4,6‐tetra‐O‐acetyl‐1‐thio‐β‐D‐glucopyranose (OPA/TATG), and separated by MEKC in an achiral environment without chiral selectors in the running buffer. Optimized precolumn reactions and chiral separations of amino acids were achieved within 2.5 min. Resolutions of diastereomers of OPA/TATG‐amino acids were in the range of 2.5–6.1 at optimized separation conditions. Simultaneous separation of a mixture of five chiral amino acids was successfully performed in a single run in less than 100 s.