Clogging-free microfluidics for continuous size-based separation of microparticles

In microfluidic filtration systems, one of the leading obstacles to efficient, continuous operation is clogging of the filters. Here, we introduce a lateral flow microfluidic sieving (μ-sieving) technique to overcome clogging and to allow continuous operation of filter based microfluidic separation....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2016-05, Vol.6 (1), p.26531-26531, Article 26531
Main Authors: Yoon, Yousang, Kim, Seonil, Lee, Jusin, Choi, Jaewoong, Kim, Rae-Kwon, Lee, Su-Jae, Sul, Onejae, Lee, Seung-Beck
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/1647/277
639/166/985
Cancer
Efficiency
Fabrication
Filters
Filtration
Fluid flow
Humanities and Social Sciences
Microfluidics
Microparticles
multidisciplinary
Oscillations
Polystyrene
Processing speed
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:In microfluidic filtration systems, one of the leading obstacles to efficient, continuous operation is clogging of the filters. Here, we introduce a lateral flow microfluidic sieving (μ-sieving) technique to overcome clogging and to allow continuous operation of filter based microfluidic separation. A low frequency mechanical oscillation was added to the fluid flow, which made possible the release of aggregated unwanted polystyrene (PS) particles trapped between the larger target PS particles in the filter demonstrating continuous μ-sieving operation. We achieved collection of the target PS particles with 100% separation efficiency. Also, on average, more than 98% of the filtered target particles were retrieved after the filtration showing high retrieval rates. Since the oscillation was applied to the fluid but not to the microfluidic filter system, mechanical stresses to the system was minimized and no additional fabrication procedures were necessary. We also applied the μ-sieving technique to the separation of cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) from whole blood and showed that the fluidic oscillations prevented the filters from being blocked by the filtered cancer cells allowing continuous microfluidic separation with high efficiency.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep26531