The combination of microfabricated microfluidic devices and mass spectrometry provides current technologies with significant advantages such as high throughput analysis and fast analysis time. We report the demonstration of affinity separation of proteins in polymeric microfluidic devices. The enclosed channels of microchips were obtained by hot embossing and thermal bonding. Polymer beads were successfully polymerized and packed in situ and used as a separation matrix when derivatized by Cibacron Blue 3GA. The performance of the microchip was evaluated by MS analysis of the protein sample mixture. The potential application of using affinity-based separation for prefractionation of samples using microfluidic devices is described.

Seung-min Park was born in Seoul, South Korea, and graduated with Bachelor's degree of Science in Physics from Seoul National University, South Korea. He came to The United States in 2002. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Applied Physics at Cornell University, where he is studying under Professor Harold Craighead. He has been conducting research in microfluidics coupled to mass spectrometry