Simultaneous analysis of seven oligopeptides in microbial fuel cell by micro-fluidic chip with reflux injection mode

In this work, a reflux injection mode for the cross form micro-fluidic chip was studied. This injection mode could flexibly control the length of sample plug from less than one channel width (<83 μm) to tens of channel widths (millimeter-sized) by adjusting the injection time. Namely, the separation resolution or sample detection sensitivity could be selectively improved by changing injection time. Composed of four steps, the reflux injection mode alleviated the electrophoretic sampling bias and prevented sample leakage successfully. On a micro-fluidic chip coupled with laser induced fluorescence (LIF) detector, the injection mode was applied to separate seven oligopeptides, namely GG, GL, RPP, KPV, VKK, WYD and YWS. All analytes were completely separated and detected within 12 min with detection limits of 25–625 nmol/L. At last, the proposed method had been successfully applied to detect oligopeptides consumed by bacillus licheniformis in anode chamber of microbial fuel cell (MFC) to study the effect of oligopeptides on the MFC running.