Microscale liquid phase separations.

Miniaturization and microfabrication of analytical instrumentation for chemical and biological analyses has been proceeding at a rapid pace for a few decades, and has gained momentum in the past decade with the introduction and application of microfabricated instruments. Motivating factors for performing microscale separations and analyses are reduced reagent, solvent and sample consumption, reduced cost, improved analysis speed, sensitivity and/ or separation efficiency, and the ability to perform multiple, often parallel, analyses on a large number of samples. Examples of areas where this is of importance are genomics, proteomics, screening of combinatorial libraries, and remote sampling and analysis. The recent trend toward miniaturization is perhaps most evident in the area of liquid phase analytical separations. Rapid development in the areas of capillary electrophoresis (CE) and microscale liquid chromatography (microLC) has led to their acceptance and routine use in the analytical laboratory over the past 15 years. Research and development continue with the introduction of new separation modes and materials, sensitive and selective detection methods, new applications, and further miniaturization and application of these techniques in microfabricated devices. Microfabricated instruments