Blood and blood products are critical components of health care. Blood components perform distinct functions in the human body and thus the ability to efficiently fractionate blood into its individual components (i.e., plasma and cellular components) is of utmost importance for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Although conventional approaches like centrifugation and membrane filtration for blood processing have been successful in generating relatively pure fractions, they are largely limited by factors such as the required blood sample volume, component purity, clogging, processing time and operation efficiency. In this work, we developed a high-throughput inertial microfluidic system for cell focusing and blood plasma separation from small to large volume blood samples (1-100 mL). Initially, polystyrene beads and blood cells were used to investigate the inertial focusing performance of a single slanted spiral microchannel as a function of particle size, flow rate, and blood cell concentration. Afterwards, blood plasma separation was conducted using an optimised spiral microchannel with relatively large dimensions. It was found that the reject ratio of the slanted spiral channel is close to 100% for blood samples with haematocrit (HCT) values of 0.5% and 1% under an optimal flow rate of 1.5 mL min(-1). Finally, through a unique multiplexing approach, we built a high-throughput system consisting of 16 spiral channels connected together, which can process diluted samples with a total flow rate as high as 24 mL min(-1). The proposed multiplexed system can surmount the shortcomings of previously reported microfluidic systems for plasma separation and cell sorting in terms of throughput, yield and operation efficiency.

Microalgae represent the most promising new source of biomass for the world's growing demands. However, the biomass productivity and quality is significantly decreased by the presence of bacteria or other invading microalgae species in the cultures. We therefore report a low-cost spiral-microchannel that can effectively separate and purify Tetraselmis suecica (lipid-rich microalgae) cultures from Phaeodactylum tricornutum (invasive diatom). Fluorescent polystyrene-microbeads of 6 μm and 10 μm diameters were first used as surrogate particles to optimize the microchannel design by mimicking the microalgae cell behaviour. Using the optimum flowrate, up to 95% of the P. tricornutum cells were separated from the culture without affecting the cell viability. This study shows, for the first time, the potential of inertial microfluidics to sort microalgae species with minimal size difference. Additionally, this approach can also be applied as a pre-sorting technique for water quality analysis.

Inertial microfluidics represents a powerful new tool for accurately positioning cells and microparticles within fluids for a variety of biomedical, clinical, and industrial applications. In spite of enormous advancements in the science and design of these devices, particularly in curved microfluidic channels, contradictory experimental results have confounded researchers and limited progress. Thus, at present, a complete theory which describes the underlying physics is lacking. We propose that this bottleneck is due to one simple mistaken assumption-the locations of inflection points of the Dean velocity profile in curved microchannels are not fixed, but can actually shift with the flow rate. Herein, we propose that the dynamic distance (δ) between the real equilibrium positions and their nearest inflection points can clearly explain several (previously) unexplained phenomena in inertial microfluidic systems. More interestingly, we found that this parameter, δ, is a function of several geometric and operational parameters, all of which are investigated (in detail) here with a series of experiments and simulations of different spiral microchannels. This key piece of understanding is expected to open the door for researchers to develop new and more effective inertial microfluidic designs.

Mixing fluid samples or reactants is a paramount function in the fields of micro total analysis system (lTAS) and microchemical processing. However, rapid and efficient fluid mixing is difficult to achieve inside microchannels because of the difficulty of diffusive mass transfer in the laminar regime of the typical microfluidic flows. It has been well recorded that the mixing efficiency can be boosted by migrating from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) geometries. Although several 3D chaotic mixers have been designed, most of them offer a high mixing efficiency only in a very limited range of Reynolds numbers (Re). In this work, we developed a 3D fine-threaded lemniscate-shaped micromixer whose maximum numerical and empirical efficiency is around 97% and 93%, respectively, and maintains its high performance (i.e., >90%) over a wide range of 1 < Re < 1000 which meets the requirements of both the lTAS and microchemical process applications. The 3D micromixer was designed based on two distinct mixing strategies, namely, the inducing of chaotic advection by the presence of Dean flow and diffusive mixing through thread-like grooves around the curved body of the mixers. First, a set of numerical simulations was performed to study the physics of the flow and to determine the essential geometrical parameters of the mixers. Second, a simple and cost-effective method was exploited to fabricate the convoluted structure of the micromixers through the removal of a 3D-printed wax structure from a block of cured polydimethylsiloxane. Finally, the fabricated mixers with different threads were tested using a fluorescent microscope demonstrating a good agreement with the results of the numerical simulation. We envisage that the strategy used in this work would expand the scope of the micromixer technology by broadening the range of efficient working flow rate and providing an easy way to the fabrication of 3D convoluted microstructures. Published by AIP Publishing.