A successive laminar flow extraction for plant medicine preparation by microfluidic chip

Liquid–liquid solvent extraction is frequently used in the purification of active ingredients from plants, and repeated extraction by different solvents with different polarity is often demanded to improve purity. According to this demand, two kinds of laminar flow extraction were designed on the microfluidic chip, i.e. a three-phase laminar chip and a successive laminar flow chip, and compared with a current two-phase chip. P. ginseng was used as a model plant to demonstrate extraction performance, and ether and n -butanol were used as the degrease solvent and extraction solvent, respectively. The results demonstrated that the extraction efficiency of a successive laminar flow chip is higher than that of a three-phase laminar flow chip, and that of both chips are higher than that of a two-phase chip. The chip method provided a new way to extract active ingredients from plants, which should be easily automated and integrated with other units to develop a complex system for sample preparation and ingredient detection.