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Magnetic field-induced particle manipulation is a promising technique for biomicrofluidics applications. It is simple, cheap, and also free of fluid heating issues that accompany other common electric, acoustic, and optical methods. This work presents a fundamental study of diamagnetic particle motion in ferrofluid flows through a rectangular microchannel with a nearby permanent magnet. Due to their negligible magnetization relative to the ferrofluid, diamagnetic particles experience negative magnetophoresis and are repelled away from the magnet. The result is a three-dimensionally focused particle stream flowing near the bottom outer corner of the microchannel that is the farthest to the center of the magnet and hence has the smallest magnetic field. The effects of the particle's relative position to the magnet, particle size, ferrofluid flow rate, and concentration on this three-dimensional diamagnetic particle deflection are systematically studied. The obtained experimental results agree quantitatively with the predictions of a three-dimensional analytical model.

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Traditional magnetic field-induced particle separations take place in water-based diamagnetic solutions, where magnetic particles are captured while diamagnetic particles flow through without being affected by the magnetic field. We demonstrate that replacing the diamagnetic aqueous medium with a dilute ferrofluid can significantly increase the throughput of magnetic and diamagnetic particle separation. This enhancement is attributed to the simultaneous positive and negative magnetophoresis of magnetic and diamagnetic particles, respectively, in a ferrofluid. The particle transport behaviors in both ferrofluid- and water-based separations are predicted using an analytical model.

Particle separation is important to many chemical and biomedical applications. Magnetic field-induced particle separation is simple, cheap, and free of fluid heating issues that accompany electric, acoustic, and optical methods. We develop herein a novel microfluidic approach to continuous sheath-free magnetic separation of particles. This approach exploits the negative or positive magnetophoretic deflection to focus and separate particles in the two branches of a U-shaped microchannel, respectively. It is applicable to both magnetic and diamagnetic particle separations, and is demonstrated through the sorting of 5 lm and 15 lm polystyrene particles suspended in a dilute ferrofluid. V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx