The Exploration of Silicon Nanowires as a Stationary Phase Support for Micro Gas Chromatographic Columns

In this paper, silicon nanowires were innovatively used as a stationary phase support for micro-fabricated gas chromatographic column ( $\mu \mathrm{GC}$ colunm). The silicon nanowires were grown in-situ in the high aspect ratio microchannels of the $\mu \mathrm{GC}$ colunm, and polydimethylsiloxane (OV-101) was used as the stationary phase. It was demonstrated that the alkane mixture of C6-C10 was well separated by using the $2\ \mathrm{m}\ \mu \mathrm{GC}$ colunm. The separation efficiency of the $\mu \mathrm{GC}$ colunm was as high as 23647 plates/m, which could be attributed to the large surface area of the silicon nanowires.