School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, P. R. China.
School of Food Equipment Engineering and Science (FEES), Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, P. R. China.
Electrophoresis. 2022 Nov;43(21-22):2217-2226. doi: 10.1002/elps.202200083. Epub 2022 Sep 9.
Separation of microparticle in viscoelastic fluid is highly required in the field of biology and clinical medicine. For instance, the separation of the target cell from blood is an important prerequisite step for the drug screening and design. The microfluidic device is an efficient way to achieve the separation of the microparticle in the viscoelastic fluid. However, the existing microfluidic methods often have some limitations, including the requirement of the long channel length, the labeling process, and the low throughput. In this work, based on the elastic-inertial effect in the viscoelastic fluid, a new separation method is proposed where a gradually contracted microchannel is designed to efficiently adjust the forces exerted on the particle, eventually achieving the high-efficiency separation of different sized particles in a short channel length and at a high throughput. In addition, the separation of WBCs and RBCs is also validated in the present device. The effect of the flow rate, the fluid property, and the channel geometry on the particle separation is systematically investigated by the experiment. With the advantage of small footprint, simple structure, high throughput, and high efficiency, the present microfluidic device could be utilized in the biological and clinical fields, such as the cell analysis and disease diagnosis.
在生物学和临床医学领域，对粘弹性流体中的微粒进行分离具有很高的要求。例如，将靶细胞从血液中分离出来是药物筛选和设计的重要前提步骤。微流控装置是实现粘弹性流体中微粒分离的有效方法。然而，现有的微流控方法通常存在一些局限性，包括对长通道长度、标记过程和低通量的要求。在这项工作中，基于粘弹性流体中的弹性惯性效应，提出了一种新的分离方法，即设计一个逐渐收缩的微通道，以有效地调整作用在粒子上的力，最终在短通道长度和高吞吐量下实现不同大小粒子的高效分离。此外，还在现有的装置中验证了白细胞（WBC）和红细胞（RBC）的分离。通过实验系统地研究了流速、流体性质和通道几何形状对粒子分离的影响。本微流控装置具有占地面积小、结构简单、高通量和高效率的优点，可用于生物学和临床医学领域，如细胞分析和疾病诊断。
