Evaluation of Performance and Tunability of a Co-Flow Inertial Microfluidic Device
Evaluation of Performance and Tunability of a Co-Flow Inertial Microfluidic Device
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DOI：
10.3390/mi11030287
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发表时间：
2020-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Papautsky, Ian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bogseth, Amanda;Zhou, Jian;Papautsky, Ian
近年来，微流控在生物样品分离和纯化方法方面引起了广泛关注。与许多主动和被动微流体技术相比，惯性微流体提供了一种简单而有效的方法来演示各种生物应用。这种方法的一个普遍限制是，一旦微流体装置制造完成，它就缺乏针对不同应用的可调性。在这项工作中，我们开发并表征了一种共流惯性微流体装置，该装置可以多种方式进行调节，以适应不同的应用要求。特别是，系统地评估了流量、流量比和输出阻力比，以实现装置截流尺寸的灵活性和制造后分离性能的修改。通常，使用单一尺寸颗粒的混合物来确定出口的截止尺寸，但这无法为更复杂的生物样品提供效率和纯度的准确预测。因此，我们使用连续粒径分布（2-32μm）的颗粒在不同流量、流量比和阻力比条件下进行分离演示。我们还使用具有连续尺寸分布（12-27 μ m）的 A549 癌细胞系作为补充演示。我们的结果表明，惯性微流控设备具有可调谐性，即使在设备原型制作之后，也可以提供多种方法来提高设备性能以适应不同的应用。
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 mu m) 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 mu m) 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.