Gao Hua, Zhou Jian, Naderi Mohammad Moein, Peng Zhangli, Papautsky Ian
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607 USA.
Microsyst Nanoeng. 2023 Jun 6;9:73. doi: 10.1038/s41378-023-00520-4. eCollection 2023.
Particle migration dynamics in viscoelastic fluids in spiral channels have attracted interest in recent years due to potential applications in the 3D focusing and label-free sorting of particles and cells. Despite a number of recent studies, the underlying mechanism of Dean-coupled elasto-inertial migration in spiral microchannels is not fully understood. In this work, for the first time, we experimentally demonstrate the evolution of particle focusing behavior along a channel downstream length at a high blockage ratio. We found that flow rate, device curvature, and medium viscosity play important roles in particle lateral migration. Our results illustrate the full focusing pattern along the downstream channel length, with side-view imaging yielding observations on the vertical migration of focused streams. Ultimately, we anticipate that these results will offer a useful guide for elasto-inertial microfluidics device design to improve the efficiency of 3D focusing in cell sorting and cytometry applications.
近年来，由于在粒子和细胞的三维聚焦及无标记分选方面的潜在应用，螺旋通道中粘弹性流体中的粒子迁移动力学引起了人们的关注。尽管最近有许多研究，但螺旋微通道中迪恩耦合弹性惯性迁移的潜在机制尚未完全理解。在这项工作中，我们首次通过实验证明了在高堵塞率下，粒子聚焦行为沿通道下游长度的演变。我们发现流速、装置曲率和介质粘度在粒子横向迁移中起着重要作用。我们的结果展示了沿下游通道长度的完整聚焦模式，侧视图成像给出了聚焦流垂直迁移的观测结果。最终，我们预计这些结果将为弹性惯性微流控装置设计提供有用的指导，以提高细胞分选和细胞计数应用中三维聚焦的效率。
