Division of Microsystems Technology, Uppsala University Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala, Sweden.
Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 19;11(1):6473. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-85910-2.
Microfluidics exploiting the phenomenon of inertial focusing have attracted much attention in the last decade as they provide the means to facilitate the detection and analysis of rare particles of interest in complex fluids such as blood and natural water. Although many interesting applications have been demonstrated, the systems remain difficult to engineer. A recently presented line of the technology, inertial focusing in High Aspect Ratio Curved microfluidics, has the potential to change this and make the benefits of inertial focusing more accessible to the community. In this paper, with experimental evidence and fluid simulations, we provide the two necessary equations to design the systems and successfully focus the targets in a single, stable, and high-quality position. The experiments also revealed an interesting scaling law of the lift force, which we believe provides a valuable insight into the phenomenon of inertial focusing.
在过去的十年中，利用惯性聚焦现象的微流控技术引起了广泛关注，因为它们提供了一种手段，可以方便地检测和分析血液和天然水中等复杂流体中感兴趣的稀有颗粒。尽管已经展示了许多有趣的应用，但这些系统仍然难以设计。最近提出的一项技术——高纵横比弯曲微流中的惯性聚焦，有可能改变这种状况，使惯性聚焦的优势更容易为科学界所接受。在本文中，我们通过实验证据和流体模拟，提供了设计系统所需的两个方程，并成功地将目标聚焦在一个单一、稳定和高质量的位置上。实验还揭示了升力的一个有趣的缩放定律，我们相信这为惯性聚焦现象提供了有价值的见解。
