In this paper, we for the first time simulate the process of hydrodynamic bead aggregation in a flat micro-fluidic chamber by a porous-media model in an iterative routine. This allows us to optimize the chamber design of our recently developed experimental method to form periodical monolayers from the flow of bead suspension. Periodical monolayers are advantageous for parallel assay formats since they enhance the mechanical rigidity of the aggregated pattern. This is important to avoid a spatial rearrangement along various steps of a read-out procedure which would impair the correlation between measurements. Furthermore, the monolayer formation guarantees the individual optical accessibility of all probe beads. By modelling the monolayers with porous media, we can drastically reduce the degrees of freedom in a two-phase, multi-particle problem. This way, we are able to compute stationary hydrodynamic flow patterns in the chamber. In order to simulate the complete filling process from these stationary solutions, we developed an iterative master routine which takes the transient aggregation pattern as the initial condition, then evaluates the placement of the newly introduced beads, and finally converts the points of aggregation into porous media.
To realize a highly parallel optical detection in bead-based bioanalytical assays, we investigate the hydrodynamic aggregation of bead suspensions in a hexagonally periodical monolayer by a pressure-driven flow through a microfluidic structure. This device consists of one inlet channel connected to a shallow chamber with a depth that only slightly exceeds the diameter of the beads. To enforce the aggregation of the beads, the flow leaves the chamber via outlet channels possessing a depth smaller than a bead diameter. This way the outlets act as barriers to the beads and force them to accumulate in the chamber. Benchmarking different chamber and outlet designs we found an optimum filing behavior for a rhombus-like aggregation chamber connected to a single outlet channel at the same width as the chamber. Here, the aperture angle of 60° fosters hexagonal aggregation patterns which leads to the highest packaging density. Reproducible filling ratios of more than 94% have been achieved. The rhombus-like chamber also shows the shows the smallest increase of the hydrodynamic resistance during filling and the best rinsing behavior which allows to minimize the volume of washing detergents used for a bioassay. Zones of accumulated beads redistribute the hydrodynamic flow through the device during the filling process. CFD-simulations, embedded in an iterative master-routine, are carried out to describe the complete process of filling and to assist the process of design optimization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.