Evaluation of Performance and Tunability of a Co-Flow Inertial Microfluidic Device
1
Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607, USA
2
University of Illinois Cancer Center, Chicago, IL 60612, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Micromachines 2020, 11(3), 287; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11030287
Received: 28 January 2020
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Revised: 28 February 2020
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Accepted: 5 March 2020
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Published: 10 March 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particles Separation in Microfluidic Devices)
Microfluidics has gained a lot of attention for biological sample separation and purification methods over recent years. From many active and passive microfluidic techniques, inertial microfluidics offers a simple and efficient method to demonstrate various biological applications. One prevalent limitation of this method is its lack of tunability for different applications once the microfluidic devices are fabricated. In this work, we develop and characterize a co-flow inertial microfluidic device that is tunable in multiple ways for adaptation to different application requirements. In particular, flow rate, flow rate ratio and output resistance ratio are systematically evaluated for flexibility of the cutoff size of the device and modification of the separation performance post-fabrication. Typically, a mixture of single size particles is used to determine cutoff sizes for the outlets, yet this fails to provide accurate prediction for efficiency and purity for a more complex biological sample. Thus, we use particles with continuous size distribution (2–32 μm) for separation demonstration under conditions of various flow rates, flow rate ratios and resistance ratios. We also use A549 cancer cell line with continuous size distribution (12–27 μm) as an added demonstration. Our results indicate inertial microfluidic devices possess the tunability that offers multiple ways to improve device performance for adaptation to different applications even after the devices are prototyped.
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Keywords:
microfluidics; particle separation
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MDPI and ACS Style
Bogseth, A.; Zhou, J.; Papautsky, I. Evaluation of Performance and Tunability of a Co-Flow Inertial Microfluidic Device. Micromachines 2020, 11, 287. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11030287
AMA Style
Bogseth A, Zhou J, Papautsky I. Evaluation of Performance and Tunability of a Co-Flow Inertial Microfluidic Device. Micromachines. 2020; 11(3):287. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11030287
Chicago/Turabian StyleBogseth, Amanda, Jian Zhou, and Ian Papautsky. 2020. "Evaluation of Performance and Tunability of a Co-Flow Inertial Microfluidic Device" Micromachines 11, no. 3: 287. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11030287
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