Design and Development of a Traveling Wave Ferro-Microfluidic Device and System Rig for Potential Magnetophoretic Cell Separation and Sorting in a Water-Based Ferrofluid

The timely detection and diagnosis of diseases and accurate monitoring of specific genetic conditions require rapid and accurate separation, sorting, and direction of target cell types toward a sensor device surface. In that regard, cellular manipulation, separation, and sorting are progressively finding application potential within various bioassay applications such as medical disease diagnosis, pathogen detection, and medical testing. The aim of this paper is to present the design and development of a simple traveling wave ferro-microfluidic device and system rig purposed for the potential manipulation and magnetophoretic separation of cells in water-based ferrofluids. This paper details in full: (1) a method for tailoring cobalt ferrite nanoparticles for specific diameter size ranges (10–20 nm), (2) the development of a ferro-microfluidic device for potentially separating cells and magnetic nanoparticles, (3) the development of a water-based ferrofluid with magnetic nanoparticles and non-magnetic microparticles, and (4) the design and development of a system rig for producing the electric field within the ferro-microfluidic channel device for magnetizing and manipulating nonmagnetic particles in the ferro-microfluidic channel. The results reported in this work demonstrate a proof of concept for magnetophoretic manipulation and separation of magnetic and non-magnetic particles in a simple ferro-microfluidic device. This work is a design and proof-of-concept study. The design reported in this model is an improvement over existing magnetic excitation microfluidic system designs in that heat is efficiently removed from the circuit board to allow a range of input currents and frequencies to manipulate non-magnetic particles. Although this work did not analyze the separation of cells from magnetic particles, the results demonstrate that non-magnetic (surrogates for cellular materials) and magnetic entities can be separated and, in some cases, continuously pushed through the channel based on amperage, size, frequency, and electrode spacing. The results reported in this work establish that the developed ferro-microfluidic device may potentially be used as an effective platform for microparticle and cellular manipulation and sorting.