Development of an Absorbance Detection Module Using a Deep UV Light-Emitting Diode for a Portable Miniaturized Liquid Chromatograph

In recent years, there has been increasing demand for miniaturized analytical instruments that allow immediate on-site analysis. We have been developing a portable HPLC system consisting of a column-integrated chip and a compact, low-power electroosmotic flow pump. This study aims to extend the versatility of the portable HPLC system with a further reduction of the overall system size, and thus we constructed a UV absorbance detection module that can be mounted to the column-integrated chip. For this detection module, a UV light-emitting diode (peak wavelength = 255 nm) and photodiode were used as a light source and photodetector, and a system to control their operation and process the signals was also constructed. The developed detection module exhibited excellent performances as an HPLC detector.