Porous Materials for Advanced Microfluidic Applications and Separations

Dear Colleagues,

I have the pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript to the forthcoming Special Issue in Materials focused on “Porous Materials for Advanced Microfluidic Applications and Separations”.

In the last few decades, porous polymer monoliths and silica monoliths have been widely used as stationary phases for application as separation, extraction and preconcentration columns in both capillary and microfluidic formats. These highly porous materials offer excellent permeability allowing the use of fast flow rates at lower back pressures as compared to particulate columns packed in microfluidic channels. Other important advantages include the wide range of pore sizes and surface chemistries available, as well as the possibility of in situ preparation of monoliths in a specific section of a microfluidic channel or capillary tubing. The latter is rather straightforward when using customized photomasks for photoinitiated polymerization of polymer monoliths, but it can be also achieved by appropriate location of the reaction mixture plug within the microfluidic channel or capillary when preparing silica monoliths by sol-gel methods. The high versatility and functionality that these porous materials offer has been further exploited in the construction of other microfluidic components, i.e., electrokinetic pumps, micromixers, microreactors and electrospray emitters. Ion-permeable membranes and microvalves based on porous polymer monolithic gels have been also successfully integrated in microfluidic channels, with valves commonly based on thermally- and photo-responsive N-isopropylacrylamide hydrogels. Recently, the range of porous monoliths embedded within microfluidic networks has been expanded to include carbon monoliths, which were used as stationary phases for sample extraction and preconcentration. 

New developments in the preparation, integration, characterisation and application of porous monolithic materials in microfluidic channels and capillaries, will be discussed in this Special Issue. Full papers, communications, and reviews are all welcome.

Dr. Mercedes Vázquez
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.