Development and validation of microfluidic lab-on-chip analyzers for the in situ quantification of dissolved iron and manganese species in seawater

There has been an increasing demand over the last decades for autonomous in situ measurement systems for the quantification of physical and chemical parameters in the marine environment. The demand is largely linked to the need to address the present undersampling of the world’s oceans. The need for reliable and well resolved time series, both on a temporal and spatial scale, cannot be satisfied with conventional approaches involving collection of discrete samples during ship campaigns followed by their analysis in a land-based laboratory. This PhD project investigates whether the well-established spectrophotometric approaches for Fe and Mn using Ferrozine (FZ) and 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN) as complexing agents, respectively, can be utilized for reliable and accurate in situ quantification of dissolved Fe and Mn species in an autonomous wet chemical analyzer based on lab-on-chip (LoC) technology. Those systems are based around a microfluidic chip and integrate all steps of analysis (sampling, sample treatment, chemical reaction, detection, data processing) into a single instrument.