BASICS
The following section is designed to provide an understanding of the processes that yield an FI response curve, and to offer tools for optimizing sensitivity, detection limit and sampling frequency of flow injection-based assays.
We begin with a description of three cornerstones on which all flow injection techniques are based:
- sample injection
- controlled dispersion
- reproducible timing
We will continue with a short discussion of how these parameters are controlled and manipulated through change of injected volumes, and manifold configurations and flow rates. While single reagent assays can be performed with the simplest single stream manifold, the majority of FI techniques use multi- stream manifolds, in which several reagents are sequentially merged with a carrier stream. The reaction mixture travels trough the flow channel either at a constant flow rate cFI or at programmed flow rate for Flow Injection (pFI ) or Sequential Injection techniques (Chapter 2)
Deeper insight into dispersion and mixing of materials in flow based systems is offered in
1.2.4.
