Development of a portable miniaturised capillary electrophoresis system for chemical nerve agents detection

Abstract

The objective of this research is to provide a complete solution to analysis suspected chemical agents accurately and rapidly at a forensic site. In order to reduce the consumed time of sending the sample to the forensic lab, this research aim to provide the real-time data for mobile forensic analysis. The system is ideally portable and operates on-site of the crime scene. This research work discussed the compatibility between CE (Capillary electrophoresis) and C4D (Capacitively-Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detection) technology applied on a miniaturised microfluidic chip device. The comparison of the practicability of micro-device analysis between high-cost but sophisticated micro/nanofabricated silicon microchip device and with low-cost but disposal polymer microchip. This project output is an integrated chemistry workstation system for mobile on-site analysing tasks. All the thesis research belongs to the sub-work-package of the EU (European Union) FP-7 GIFT.