On-Line UV Spectrophotometric Analysis for Organic Chemistry of Novel Inorganic Polymer Derived Microreactor

Abstract

The use of microfluidic or lab-on-a-chip system has shown great promise for many applications. We have previously reported fabrication and application of preceramic polymer derived chemically and mechanically stable microfluidic devices in organic synthesis. Even though organic reactions are successfully performed, it is hard to analyze product to evaluate yields without any time delay except for integration of detecting module in the devices. Moreover small sample volume makes it even difficult to analyze sample by conventional analytical tools. Removal of catalyst and by product before analysis is another hurdle in evaluating performance of microrector. In this paper we describe preliminary results for simple on-line (real-time) quantitative analysis of microchemical reaction in preceramic polymer derived microreactor without reconstruction of microreactor or expensive components. A commercial UV/VIS spectrophotometer is used to monitor well established Knoevenagel reaction. To evaluate the performance of presented on-line UV/VIS monitoring system, UV/VIS data are compared with off-line gas chromatography based analysis system.