Appropriate chip-to-tube interfacing is an enabling technology for high-pressure and high-speed liquid chromatography on chip. For this purpose, various approaches, to connect pressure resistant glass chips with HPLC pumps working at pressures of up to 500 bar, were examined. Three side-port and one top-port connection approach were evaluated with regard to pressure stability and extra column band broadening. A clamp-based top-port approach enabled chip-HPLC-MS analysis of herbicides at the highest pressure and speed.

Utilizing temperature as an active parameter for optimization in chip-based liquid chromatography is an important step toward high-speed and high-efficiency separations on the microscale. A device including a low thermal mass micro thermostat and a microfluidic glass chip as central elements were designed and evaluated for maximal heating performance of up to 4.7 °C s at up to 200 °C. With this enabling technology, high-speed separations in temperature gradient mode were performed both in common reversed-phase eluents and environmental friendly ethanol-based alternatives.