Currently, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a rise in illicit substances production, trade and consumption. These substances are mixtures of many street drugs that are difficult to detect and quantify. In forensic laboratories, drug abuse can be detected using the subject’s body fluid samples (blood, urine, saliva). For further research, An Ultra High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) system can isolate these substances for individual examination. Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) and Liquid Chromatography Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Mass Spectrometry (LC-MALDI-MS) can be used to detect and quantify these drugs. Because these samples contain only a small amount of drug concentration (50 ppb at 25 μL), the amount of samples from the chromatographic process are in the range of 3-30 μL. Automatic collecting machines are necessary to collect, separate and prepare these samples from the UHPLC process for MS and MALDI MS experiments. Therefore, these devices must successfully inject microliter-level samples into containers with short fractioning intervals, high repeatability and customizable collection time. This thesis presents the development of a collection platform for two automatic system designs: Automatic Fraction Collector (AFC) and Automatic Spot Preparation System (ASPS). The AFC can fraction samples into 40 Eppendorf PCR tubes with a minimum fractioning resolution of 3 μL in 6 seconds (30 μL/min). The ASPS system can generate sample droplets on the MALDI plate (200 wells) with a spot volume of 4-8 μL in 8 seconds (30 μL/min). These systems can be integrated directly into liquid chromatography devices to simplify the collection and fractioning process. These system improve the accuracy of the fractioning process, reduce extra steps, and eliminate human errors.

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