A novel cell separation distance enhancer for inertial microfluidic devices

The isolation of circulating tumor cells from whole blood is quite challenging due to their rarity in blood. Therefore, high-throughput microchannels with the highest efficiencies are needed. Inertial cell separation has been gaining great attention in recent years since it has been considered a label-free, high-throughput, and efficient method. Recently we have introduced a spiral microfluidic that separates particles of various sizes including ۱۲μm,۱۶μm and ۱۸μm. However, obtaining high-throughput particle separation at high flow rates was challenging. To overcome this problem, in this study, we aimed to examine the separation of ۱۶μm and ۱۸μm particles by creating an outlet segment that handles high flow rates. Our objective was to enhance the separation distance to about ۱۵۰μm while the flow rate is increased up to ۲.۴ml/min. In order to optimize the simulation results, the correlation between the expansion zone angle and the separation distance was thoroughly analyzed. This study demonstrated that by coupling different inertial zones, the separation distance could be increased.

Keywords:

high separation distance , inertial microfluidics , cell separation , hydrodynamic lift