Wickramasinghe Madushan, Nawarathna Dharmakeerthi
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23508, USA.
Biomedical Engineering Program, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23508, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2025 Sep 18;25(18):5816. doi: 10.3390/s25185816.
Cell separation techniques are widely used in many biomedical and clinical applications for the development of screening, diagnosis and therapeutic tests. Current 3D microfluidics-based cell separation methods have limited applications in part due to low throughput and technical complexity. To address these critical needs, we have developed a 2D microfluidics surface which is the miniaturized version of a 3D microfluids cell separation device. Using low-frequency electric fields (1-10 Vpp and 1 kHz-20 MHz), we have first studied dielectrophoresis, AC electro-osmosis and capillary flow within a sessile drop, and finally utilized the results to develop the 2D cell separation surface. Our study has demonstrated that frequency-dependent dielectrophoretic force and AC electro-osmotic flow can be integrated to minimize the capillary flow and subsequently produce clusters of target cells within the 2D microfluidics surface. To demonstrate the concept, we have isolated the blood cells from a red blood cell-lysed blood sample. Cell isolation results show that significant improvement in throughout up to about 120-fold over 3D microfluidics devices. Additionally, due to the technical simplicity, this device offers great potential for use in a wide range of biomedical and clinical applications.
细胞分离技术在许多生物医学和临床应用中被广泛用于筛选、诊断和治疗测试的开发。目前基于三维微流控的细胞分离方法应用有限，部分原因是通量低和技术复杂。为满足这些关键需求，我们开发了一种二维微流控表面，它是三维微流控细胞分离装置的小型化版本。利用低频电场（1 - 10 Vpp和1 kHz - 20 MHz），我们首先研究了介电泳、交流电渗和静滴内的毛细管流，最后利用这些结果开发了二维细胞分离表面。我们的研究表明，频率依赖性介电泳力和交流电渗流可以结合起来，以最小化毛细管流，进而在二维微流控表面产生目标细胞簇。为验证这一概念，我们从红细胞裂解的血液样本中分离出了血细胞。细胞分离结果表明，通量比三维微流控装置提高了约120倍。此外，由于技术简单，该装置在广泛的生物医学和临床应用中具有巨大的应用潜力。
