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Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners

Separating the particles from the liquid component of sample solutions is important for several microfluidic-based sample preparations and/or sample handling techniques, such as plasma separation from whole blood, sheath-free flow focusing, particle enrichment etc. This paper presents a microfluidic...

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Autores principales: Eluru, Gangadhar, Nagendra, Pavan, Gorthi, Sai Siva
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680991/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31311077
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070471
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author Eluru, Gangadhar
Nagendra, Pavan
Gorthi, Sai Siva
author_facet Eluru, Gangadhar
Nagendra, Pavan
Gorthi, Sai Siva
author_sort Eluru, Gangadhar
collection PubMed
description Separating the particles from the liquid component of sample solutions is important for several microfluidic-based sample preparations and/or sample handling techniques, such as plasma separation from whole blood, sheath-free flow focusing, particle enrichment etc. This paper presents a microfluidic in-flow decantation technique that provides the separation of particles from particle-free fluid while in-flow. The design involves the expansion of sample fluid channel in lateral and depth directions, thereby producing a particle-free layer towards the walls of the channel, followed by gradual extraction of this particle-free fluid through a series of tiny openings located towards one-end of the depth-direction. The latter part of this design is quite crucial in the functionality of this decantation technique and is based on the principle called wee-extraction. The design, theory, and simulations were presented to explain the principle-of-operation. To demonstrate the proof-of-principle, the experimental characterization was performed on beads, platelets, and blood samples at various hematocrits (2.5%–45%). The experiments revealed clog-free separation of particle-free fluid for at least an hour of operation of the device and demonstrated purities close to 100% and yields as high as 14%. The avenues to improve the yield are discussed along with several potential applications.
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spelling pubmed-66809912019-08-09 Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners Eluru, Gangadhar Nagendra, Pavan Gorthi, Sai Siva Micromachines (Basel) Article Separating the particles from the liquid component of sample solutions is important for several microfluidic-based sample preparations and/or sample handling techniques, such as plasma separation from whole blood, sheath-free flow focusing, particle enrichment etc. This paper presents a microfluidic in-flow decantation technique that provides the separation of particles from particle-free fluid while in-flow. The design involves the expansion of sample fluid channel in lateral and depth directions, thereby producing a particle-free layer towards the walls of the channel, followed by gradual extraction of this particle-free fluid through a series of tiny openings located towards one-end of the depth-direction. The latter part of this design is quite crucial in the functionality of this decantation technique and is based on the principle called wee-extraction. The design, theory, and simulations were presented to explain the principle-of-operation. To demonstrate the proof-of-principle, the experimental characterization was performed on beads, platelets, and blood samples at various hematocrits (2.5%–45%). The experiments revealed clog-free separation of particle-free fluid for at least an hour of operation of the device and demonstrated purities close to 100% and yields as high as 14%. The avenues to improve the yield are discussed along with several potential applications. MDPI 2019-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC6680991/ /pubmed/31311077 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070471 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Eluru, Gangadhar
Nagendra, Pavan
Gorthi, Sai Siva
Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners
title Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners
title_full Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners
title_fullStr Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners
title_full_unstemmed Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners
title_short Microfluidic In-Flow Decantation Technique Using Stepped Pillar Arrays and Hydraulic Resistance Tuners
title_sort microfluidic in-flow decantation technique using stepped pillar arrays and hydraulic resistance tuners
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680991/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31311077
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070471
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