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Design And Performance Evaluation Of A Gas Chromatograph Micromachined In A Single Crystal Silicon Substrate, Rocky R. Reston

Theses and Dissertations

This investigation designed and developed a miniature gas chromatograph (GC) using silicon micromachining techniques. The GC is composed of a miniature sample injector (10 µl sample loop); a 0.9 m long, rectangular-shaped (300 µm width and 10 micrometers height) capillary column coated with a 0.2 µm thick copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) stationary phase; and a dual-detector scheme incorporating a CuPc-coated chemiresistor and a 125 µm diameter thermal conductivity detector bead. Micromachining was employed to fabricate the sample injector interface, the GC column, and the dual-detector cavity. A novel processing technique was developed to sublime the CuPc stationary phase coating on the …