Syed Maira Shakeel, Mirakhorli Fateme, Marquis Christopher, Taylor Robert A, Warkiani Majid Ebrahimi
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
School of Biomedical Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia.
Biomicrofluidics. 2020 Nov 19;14(6):064106. doi: 10.1063/5.0025391. eCollection 2020 Nov.
A hydrocyclone is a separation device employed in various industries, with many advantages, including high-throughput and low operational costs. Translating these advantages to has been a challenge due to the microscale fabrication limitations that can be surmounted using 3D printing technology. Additionally, it is difficult to simulate the performance of real 3D-printed micro-hydrocyclones because of turbulent eddies and the deviations from the design due to printing resolution. To address these issues, we propose a new experimental method for the direct observation of particle motion in 3D printed micro-hydrocyclones. To do so, wax 3D printing and soft lithography were used in combination to construct a transparent micro-hydrocyclone in a single block of polydimethylsiloxane. A high-speed camera and fluorescent particles were employed to obtain clear images and to confirm the presence of the vortex core. To showcase the use of this method, we demonstrate that a well-designed device can achieve a 95% separation efficiency for a sample containing a mixture of (desired) stem cells and (undesired) microcarriers. Overall, we hope that the proposed method for the direct visualization of particle trajectories in micro-hydrocyclones will serve as a tool, which can be leveraged to accelerate the development of micro-hydrocyclones for biomedical applications.
水力旋流器是一种应用于各种行业的分离设备，具有许多优点，包括高通量和低运营成本。由于微尺度制造限制，将这些优点转化为实际应用一直是一个挑战，而3D打印技术可以克服这些限制。此外，由于湍流涡旋和打印分辨率导致的与设计的偏差，很难模拟真实3D打印微水力旋流器的性能。为了解决这些问题，我们提出了一种新的实验方法，用于直接观察3D打印微水力旋流器中的颗粒运动。为此，结合使用蜡3D打印和软光刻技术，在一块聚二甲基硅氧烷中构建了一个透明的微水力旋流器。使用高速相机和荧光颗粒来获取清晰的图像并确认涡核的存在。为了展示该方法的应用，我们证明了一个精心设计的设备对于含有（所需的）干细胞和（不需要的）微载体混合物的样品可以实现95%的分离效率。总体而言，我们希望所提出的直接可视化微水力旋流器中颗粒轨迹的方法将成为一种工具，可用于加速生物医学应用中微水力旋流器的开发。
