Three-tiered approach for standard information requirements for polymers requiring registration under REACH.

Polymers are a very large class of chemicals comprising often complex molecules with multiple functions used in everyday products. The EU Commission is seeking to develop environmental and human health standard information requirements (SIRs) for man-made polymers requiring registration (PRR) under a revised Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Regulation. Conventional risk assessment approaches currently used for small molecules may not apply to most polymers.

How electrospray potentials can disrupt droplet microfluidics and how to prevent this.

A pressure-resistant microfluidic glass chip that integrates a packed-bed HPLC column, a droplet generator and a monolithic electrospray emitter is presented. This approach enables a seamless coupling of chip-HPLC and droplet microfluidics with ESI-MS detection. For the electrical contacting of the emitter, an electrode was integrated into the channel, which reaches up to the emitter tip.

Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy in microchip electrophoresis.

Coupling microchip capillary electrophoresis to surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (MCE-SERS) combines the high separation power of capillary electrophoresis with the capability to obtain vibrational fingerprint spectra for compound identification. Raman spectroscopy is a structurally descriptive and label-free detection method which is particularly suited for chemical analysis because it is non-destructive and allows the identification of analytes. However, it suffers from poor sensitivity and sometimes even requires acquisition times far longer than the typical peak width of electrophoretic separations.

Seamless Combination of High-Pressure Chip-HPLC and Droplet Microfluidics on an Integrated Microfluidic Glass Chip.

We introduce an approach for the integration of high performance liquid chromatography and droplet microfluidics on a single high-pressure resistant microfluidic glass chip. By coupling these two functionalities, separated analyte bands eluting from the HPLC column are fractionated into numerous droplets in a continuous flowing oil phase. The compartmentalization of the HPLC-eluate in a segmented flow was performed with droplet sizes of approximately 1 nL and with droplet frequencies reaching up to 45 Hz.

Chip-based electrochromatography coupled to ESI-MS detection.

In this study, we present the coupling of chip-based electrochromatography to MS using a glass chip with a monolithically integrated nanoelectrospray emitter. As separation column, an acrylate-based porous polymer monolith is implemented into the glass chip by photopolymerization. For the establishment and development of this method, we used a test mixture detectable with both fluorescence and ESI-MS.

Solid-state syntheses of coordination polymers by thermal conversion of molecular building blocks and polymeric precursors.

The syntheses and crystal structures of a mononuclear cadmium complex and five novel coordination polymers based on 1,2,4-triazolyl benzoates are presented. The compounds (∞)(3)[Cd(H-Me-trz-pba)(2)] (2), (∞)(3)[Cd(Me-3py-trz-pba)(2)] (4), and (∞)(3)[Zn(H-Me-trz-pba)(2)] (6) can be obtained by solvothermal synthesis or simple heating of the starting materials in appropriate solvents, and are also accessible by thermal conversion of the complex [Cd(H-Me-trz-pba)(2)(H(2)O)(4)] (1), the one-dimensional (1D) coordination polymer (∞)(1)[Cd(Me-3py-trz-pba)(2)(H(2)O)(2)]·H(2)O (3), and the porous three-dimensional (3D) framework (∞)(3)[Zn(H-Me-trz-pba)2]·4H(2)O (5), respectively. The driving force for these conversions is the formation of thermally stable, nonporous, crystalline 3D coordination polymers.