Fabrication and characterisation of a silicon- borosilicate glass microfluidic device for synchrotron-based hard X-ray spectroscopy studies Pushparani Micheal Raj, * a Laurent Barbe, b Martin Andersson, b Milena De Albuquerque Moreira, b D ¨ orthe Haase, a James Wootton, a Susan Nehzati, a Ann E. Terry, a Ross J. Friel, c Maria Tenje b and Kajsa G. V. Sigfridsson Clauss * a Some of the most fundamental chemical building blocks of life on Earth are the metal elements. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is an element-specific technique that can analyse the local atomic and electronic structure of, for example, the active sites in catalysts and energy materials and allow the metal sites in biological samples to be identified and understood. A microfluidic device capable of withstanding the intense hard X-ray beams of a 4th generation synchrotron and harsh chemical sample conditions is presented in this work. The device is evaluated at the K-edges of iron and bromine and the L 3 -edge of lead, in both transmission and fluorescence mode detection and in a wide range of sample concentrations, as low as 0.001 M. The device is fabricated in silicon and glass with plasma etched microchannels defined in the silicon wafer before anodic bonding of the glass wafer into a complete device. The device is supported with a well-designed printed chip holder that made the microfluidic device portable and easy to handle. The chip holder plays a pivotal role in mounting the delicate microfluidic device on the beamline stage. Testing validated that the device was sufficiently robust to contain and flow through harsh acids and toxic samples. There was also no significant radiation damage to the device observed, despite focusing with intense X-ray beams for multiple hours. The quality of X- ray spectra collected is comparable to that from standard methods; hence we present a robust microfluidic device to analyse liquid samples using synchrotron XAS. Introduction Microuidics has emerged as an easily adaptable platform in many research elds such as biology, medicine, marine science, geology, fossil fuels and space science. 1–4 It is possible to inte- grate the microuidic platform into various applications by carefully assessing the characteristics alongside study require- ments. The microuidic technology benets have been lauded many times in the literature; low volumes, ease of fabrication and a high degree of integration, making it attractive for adoption in various research areas. In addition, any micro- uidic system is highly controllable in attributes such as ambience, ow rates and delivery patterns, e.g., laminar ow, droplets or ow focusing. The highly interdisciplinary approach to microuidics also attracts multiple elds, of which X-ray studies are gaining momentum. 5,6 The high brilliance synchrotron light facilities worldwide provide high-intensity X-ray beams to determine the molecular structure, ngerprinting and study of many previously invisible dynamics and interactions lying in multiple layers of an atom. 7 Synchrotron facilities offer X-rays in a wide range of energies (from a few hundred eV to tens of keV), and the energy matches orbitals of the atoms (ionising radiation). The radiation inter- acts with matter (transmitted, scattered or absorbed). It is used to study samples in all physical forms from gas, liquid and solid (crystalline as well as amorphous) using a range of X-ray tech- niques (scattering, diffraction, 2D–3D-imaging and spectros- copy). However, in addition to providing spatial and/or structural and electronic information, the ionising X-ray beam can damage the samples during analysis. Water-containing samples are sensitive to X-ray induced radiolysis of the water, which forms both gas (bubbles) and aqueous free electrons, that readily reduce high valence metal ions (radiation-induced reduction). For a liquid sample, this effect can be avoided/ a MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. E-mail: pushpa.micheal@gmail. com b Dept. Materials Science and Engineering, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden c School of Information Technology, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden Cite this: RSC Adv. , 2021, 11, 29859 Received 9th July 2021 Accepted 26th August 2021 DOI: 10.1039/d1ra05270e rsc.li/rsc-advances © 2021 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry RSC Adv. , 2021, 11, 29859–29869 | 29859 RSC Advances PAPER Open Access Article. Published on 07 September 2021. Downloaded on 11/3/2021 3:29:08 PM. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. View Article Online View Journal | View Issue
Fabrication and characterisation of a siliconborosilicate glass microfluidic device for synchrotron-based hard X-ray spectroscopy studies
Jun 20, 2023
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