Low-cost, disposable microfluidics device for blood plasma extraction using continuously alternating paramagnetic and diamagnetic capture modes

Abstract

Blood plasma contains biomarkers and substances that indicate the physiological state of an organism, and it can be used to diagnose various diseases or body condition. To improve the accuracy of diagnostic test, it is required to obtain the high purity of blood plasma. This paper presents a low-cost, disposable microfluidics device for blood plasma extraction using magnetophoretic behaviors of blood cells. This device uses alternating magnetophoretic capture modes to trap and separate paramagnetic and diamagnetic cells away from blood plasma. The device system is composed of two parts, a disposable microfluidics chip and a non-disposable (reusable) magnetic field source. Such modularized device helps the structure of the disposable part dramatically simplified, which is beneficial for low-cost mass production. A series of numerical simulation and parametric study have been performed to describe the mechanism of blood cell separation in the microchannel, and the results are discussed. Furthermore, experimental feasibility test has been carried out in order to demonstrate the blood plasma extraction process of the proposed device. In this experiment, pure blood plasma has been successfully extracted with yield of 21.933% from 75 ll 1:10 dilution of deoxygenated blood.

Nano-Interstice Driven Powerless Blood Plasma Extraction in a Membrane Filter Integrated Microfluidic Device

“…Structural interruption in microfluidic channels can extract plasma via just capillary forces (P−) or with external force fields due to a pump or pressure regulator (P+). Structural interruption techniques without an external force field (P−) can only extract a very limited volume of plasma (less than 3 μL), with low efficiency of less than 10% [ 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ], but with an external force field the extraction volume [ 24 , 26 , 46 , 47 ] or efficiency [ 25 , 27 , 48 , 49 ] are increased. Similarly, membrane filters can extract relatively large amounts of plasma without an external force field (10–20 μL) but with a very limited extraction efficiency of less than 8%, even in commercial kits [ 17 , 23 ].…”

Numerical and experimental analysis of a high-throughput blood plasma separator for point-of-care applications

“…These products are used as biomarkers, indicating the presence of certain diseases in an individual. [1][2][3] However, blood cells sometimes interfere in the biochemical readout of the results. Hence, plasma cell separation is essential in disease diagnostics.…”

A passive portable microfluidic blood–plasma separator for simultaneous determination of direct and indirect ABO/Rh blood typing

“…Blood is a mixture of various particles such as red blood cells (RBC), white blood cells (WBC) and platelets suspended in plasma. The plasma, which is around 55% of blood volume, contains various circulating biomarkers such as antibodies [1]. Different blood types exist due to the presence or absence of certain antigens on the surface of the RBCs and antibodies in the plasma.…”

“…The procedure of blood-plasma separation in microfluidic devices is classified into two categories; Active and passive. Active methods rely on external energy for cell separation such as acoustic [26,27], electrical [21] [28][29][30] and magnetic [1] [31,32], while passive methods work autonomously without the aid of external energy [19]. Passive methods usually rely on capillary forces which include sedimentation [33][34][35][36], cell deviation [37,38], and microfiltration [39][40][41].…”