Enhancement of microfluidic particle separation using cross-flow filters with hydrodynamic focusing
A microfluidic chip is proposed to separate microparticles using cross-flow filtration enhanced with hydrodynamic focusing. By exploiting a buffer flow from the side, the microparticles in the sample flow are pushed on one side of the microchannels, lining up to pass through the filters. Meanwhile a...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Biomicrofluidics 2016-01, Vol.10 (1), p.011906-011906 |
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Format: | Artikel |
Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | A microfluidic chip is proposed to separate microparticles using cross-flow filtration
enhanced with hydrodynamic focusing. By exploiting a buffer flow from the side, the
microparticles in the sample flow are pushed on one side of the microchannels,
lining up to pass through the filters. Meanwhile a larger pressure gradient in the filters
is obtained to enhance separation efficiency. Compared with the traditional cross-flow
filtration, our proposed mechanism has the buffer flow to create a moving
virtual boundary for the sample flow to actively push all the particles to reach the
filters for separation. It further allows higher flow rates. The device
only requires soft lithograph fabrication to create microchannels and a novel pressurized
bonding technique to make high-aspect-ratio filtration structures. A mixture of
polystyrene microparticles with 2.7 μm and 10.6 μm
diameters are successfully separated. 96.2 ± 2.8% of the large particle are recovered with
a purity of 97.9 ± 0.5%, while 97.5 ± 0.4% of the small particle are depleted with a
purity of 99.2 ± 0.4% at a sample throughput of 10 μl/min. The experiment
is also conducted to show the feasibility of this mechanism to separate biological
cells with the
sample solutions of spiked PC3 cells in whole blood. By virtue of its high separation efficiency, our
device offers a label-free separation technique and potential integration with other components,
thereby serving as a promising tool for continuous cell filtration and analysis
applications. |
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ISSN: | 1932-1058 1932-1058 |
DOI: | 10.1063/1.4939944 |