Fabrication of micro packed gas chromatography column for gas analysis

In order to separate the permanent gases from low carbon hydrocarbons, a gas chromatography (GC) column packed with porapak Q as stationary phase was fabricated based on MEMS technology. In this work, the channels on the glass wafer and the silicon wafer were fabricated by a laser etching technology (LET). LET is an effective method to etch a deep channels on the glass wafer as well as on the silicon wafer, so the depth of the channels can be substantially increased by bonding the channels on the silicon together with the channels on the glass wafer. The fabricated column with a rectangular cross section of 1.2 mm (depth) 0.6 mm (width) has a large aspect ratio of 2∶1, which improves the resolution of the column. The experiment shows that the fabricated column demonstrated large sample capacity and completely separated the permanent gases CO and SO2 from low hydrocarbons.