Micro/Nano Fluid Filter Chip

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Introduction of Micro/Nano Fluid Filter

The separation of micro-scale particles has been an important issue for specific particle identification and analysis in biochemical, industrial, and clinical applications. With the advantages of manipulating microparticles precisely, microfluidics has been actively adopted to achieve the goals. In general, there are two categories for microparticle separation, including active and passive methods. The active method uses external forces such as the particle’s specific dielectric, magnetic or optical properties. The passive methods utilize distinctive physical characteristics of the particles, such as size, density, and deformability. In biomedical analysis, the living cells separation is a powerful tool for diagnostic and prognostic applications.

Microfluidic-based Cross-Flow Filtration

Microfluidics is an ideal tool for manipulating microscale projects, such as pinched flow fractionation, microfluidic disk, cross-flow filtration, laminar vortices, and centrifugation/inertial focusing. To separate label-free cells, cross-flow filtration is one of the most classical techniques with the advantages of simple, non-destructive, and easy for downstream process integration. Due to the flow direction being vertical to the filtration direction, the cross-flow filtration avoids particle aggregation and cell deformation. To further promote efficiency, a diffusive channel has been designed to improve the efficiency of cross-flow filtration. The chips expanded to both sides gradually to generate a larger pressure drop, so that push cells towered to filters. The chip design gradually expanded to both sides, generating larger pressure drop to pushed cells towered to filters. Using this method, the plasma, red blood cells (RBCs), leukocytes (WBCs), and rare cells have been separated from whole blood.

Fig. 1 Microfluidic continuous particle separation chip. (Yoon, et al., 2016)

Lateral Flow Microfluidic Sieving (μ-sieving) Technique

One of the leading obstacles in a microfluidic filtration system is the clogging of the filters, which largely affect efficient and continuous operation. The lateral flow microfluidic sieving (μ-sieving) technique is a novel method to avoid clogging so which allows continuous operation of filter-based microfluidic separation. Compared with conventional filtration systems, the μ-sieving devices added fluid oscillations to achieve this function. Some studies have shown that the separation of cancer cells from whole blood present continuous microfluidic separation with high efficiency. In summary, the μ-sieving devices achieved high specificity and throughput. Furthermore, μ-sieving may be applied in future liquid biopsy.

Fig.2 Schematic illustrations of the μ-sieving principle. (Yoon 2016)

With years of experience, our scientists have developed various microfluidic chips with the highest quality standards for different purposes. We can also offer one-stop microfluidic solutions to meet the special needs of our clients. If you are interested in our services, please do not hesitate to contact us for more detailed information.

Reference

Yoon, Kim, et al. " Clogging-free microfluidics for continuous size-based separation of microparticles." Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 26531.

For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.