Droplet Microfluidics with Ionic Liquids for Chemical Analysis and Separations

Abstract

Ionic Liquids (ILs), liquid salts of organic cations and organic or inorganic anions, possess remarkable features and their physical properties can be altered by the judicious choice of cation or anion. Droplet microfluidics involves high-throughput generation and manipulation of discrete droplets flowing in an immiscible liquid inside a microchannel with precise control over the size, shape and throughput of droplets. This thesis exploits salient features of ILs as designer liquids and develops droplet microfluidic methods for biphasic chemical separations and analysis. To modulate the unique features of ILs, there has been also enormous interest in material science to incorporate ILs into macromolecular structures. This thesis also explores the microfluidic fabrication and applications of polymerized ILs, highly monodisperse poly(ionic liquid) microgel beads, as matrices that can be chemically switched in a facile fashion by anion exchange and further enriched by molecular inclusion for advanced, stimulus-responsive chemical separations and sensing.