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Microfluidic chips realize the manipulation, transportation and capture of cells and molecules through liquid phase flow. Creative Biolabs uses cutting-edge fluid mechanics knowledge to help our clients to develop, design and construct well-designed flow-type analysis chip.

Cellular Microfluidics

As an emerging research tool in the field of biology, microfluidic chips have been widely studied and applied due to their remarkable advantages such as variable structure and convenient control. The combination of microfluidic chips and traditional analytical methods has become an important subfield in biological research, and many promising research systems have been developed.

The biggest advantage of microfluidic chips is that they can realize on-chip real-time transportation, manipulation and capture of cells through functional units and special structures. With these new devices and cutting-edge microfabrication technology platforms, Creative Biolabs helps our clients to isolate, concentrate or fix cells in microsystems for downstream analysis. Our commonly used fluid cell manipulation methods include:

• Flow Focusing
  The most important application of flow focusing in the field of microfluidics is the generation of monodisperse droplets using external flow and flow confocal principles. With the application of microfluidic technology in the field of biological research, researchers have used similar principles to confine cells or other large biological particles along specific trajectories in the chip channel. By adding the faster Sheah flow laterally to the liquid flow to be tested, the main flow will be limited to a narrow flow with a fixed position and relative width relative to the flow ratio. This technique is widely used in 3D flow focusing, cell counting, and optical detection.

Fig 1. Confocal image of flow focusing chip. (Yuan, et al., 2021)

• Pinched Channel
  Pinched channel microsystem is one of the extended applications of flow-focusing technology. By focusing biomolecules of different sizes along one side of the channel wall, these cells or particles follow different streamlines depending on their size. Larger particles travel in the direction of their center of gravity, while smaller particles flow against the channel walls. After a sudden increase in channel size, large particles follow streamlines away from smaller particles. This principle is widely used in the separation and purification of cells or biomolecules.

Deterministic Lateral Displacement (DLD)

Deterministic arrays are miniature devices widely used for the isolation of circulating tumor cells and blood components. In the DLD array, smaller particles slide between the two rows of pillars, and in a more macroscopic observation, their path is a straight line along the direction of inflow. A particle with a diameter larger than the threshold will be trapped by the streamline and move laterally as it approaches the micropillar, and on average, it will follow a diagonal path. The size threshold of DLD-separated particles is directly related to the diameter and distribution of micropillars.

Fig 2. In DLD equipment, particles will follow Bump mode and Zigzag mode. (Salafi, et al., 2019)

Dean Flow

Dean flow is a vortex effect produced when the fluid inertia is large enough and the curved microchannel has sufficient curvature. In a spiral microchannel, cells with neutral buoyancy will be subjected to three kinds of forces exerted on them by Dean flow, including the force that propels the particles to flow forward, the lift force that concentrates the particles to the four equilibrium positions, and the only retains resistance near the equilibrium position of the inner wall. These three forces work together to make particles with different inertias flow along different trajectories.

Fig 3. Top and cross-sectional views of a high-curvature chip using Dean flow. (Nivadita, et al., 2017)

Our Service

The goal of modern biological detection is to process and detect samples as little as possible, and the successful control of biomolecules and cells has become the first step in the precise analysis. At Creative Biolabs, microfluidic chips can achieve stable transport and precise manipulation of biomolecules or cells through microflow and microdroplets. With our help, you will be able to develop and construct chip structures suitable for your experimental scheme or directly obtain our optimized and verified chip. Whether you want to achieve on-chip real-time manipulation of biomolecules through flow control, or want to use this as a starting point for more sophisticated downstream analysis and detection, we will be your best partner, so don't hesitate to contact us for more information.

References

1. Yuan, X.; et al. A 3D hydrodynamic fow‑focusing device for cell sorting. Microfluidic and Nanofluidics. 2021, 25: 23.
2. Salafi, T.; et al. A review on deterministic lateral displacement for particle separation and detection. Nano-Micro Letters. 2019, 11: 99.
3. Nicedita, N.; et al. Dean flow dynamics in low-aspect-ratio spiral microchannels. Scientific Reports. 2017, 7: 44072.

For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.