Mapping low-Reynolds-number microcavity flows using microfluidic screening devices

Microparticle image velocimetry (μPIV) study of microcavity flow at low Reynolds number

“…techniques, low Reynolds number flows in microchannels with microcavities are attractive for precisely controlling of flow behaviors and establishing appropriate cell culture conditions, due to the unique hydrodynamic flow behaviors and the special structure of the microcavities (Fishler et al 2013;Karimi et al 2013;Liu et al 2008Liu et al , 2009Nilsson et al 2009;Tanyeri and Schroeder 2013;Yew et al 2013;Yu et al 2005). Furthermore, microcavity flows have many other promising abilities to mimic in vivo microenvironment, to use small quantities of samples/reagents, to be fabricated easily, to easily make heterogeneous cellular environment with multiplexing assay, and to analyze cellular information at the single-cell level (Yun et al 2013).…”

“…The demand for fine and precise control of microscale fluid flows in microfluidic devices for different applications, such as cell and particle trapping Park et al 2010;Mach et al 2011), sorting (Park et al 2009;Mu et al 2013), alignment (Nilsson et al 2009;Fan et al 2014), and separating target cells from heterogeneous cell solution (Yun et al 2013;Sackmann et al 2014;Zhou et al 2013), has become a central research theme in microfluidic systems (Fishler et al 2013;Yu et al 2005). Moreover, well-defined ideal chemical microenvironments and controlled stable spatiotemporal chemical and thermal gradients in microfluidic devices are needed for better understanding of different fundamental processes involved in cell regulating mechanisms and molecular interactions (Nilsson et al 2009;Yew et al 2013).…”

“…Microcavity flow has been increasingly used in microfluidic devices, and various microcavity geometric configurations have been developed for cell trapping and culture, e.g., microwells (Cioffi et al 2010;Hur et al 2010;Jang et al 2011;Luo et al 2007;Manbachi et al 2008) and microgrooves (Khabiry et al 2009;Park et al 2010) located on the bottom of the microchannel for cell docking, microcavities located on the side wall of the microchannel with square (Yu et al 2005), rectangular (Yew et al 2013), cylindrical (Fishler et al 2013), diamond and trapezoidal (Chiu 2007;Shelby et al 2003) shapes, and sharp corner structures (Fan et al 2014). Besides, rectangular microcavities have also been used for cell and particle high-throughput sorting in microfluidic devices Mach et al 2011;Park et al 2009;Zhou et al 2013).…”

“…Most of the research work has been devoted to study of flow separation on macroscale, and only a few researches are focused on the flow behaviors in the microcavities (Yu et al 2005). Fishler et al (2013) investigated flow phenomena in microchannels lined with cylindrical microcavities using microparticle image velocimetry (μPIV) measurements and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The effects of microcavity geometry and Reynolds numbers (Re = 0.1, 1 and 10) on resulting microvortices configurations inside the cylindrical microcavities were studied, finding two flow regimes: attached flow and separated flow, the latter featuring single vortex or complex multivortex systems.…”

Microfluidic Vortex Enhancement for on-Chip Sample Preparation

“…Passive microvortices are created by channel geometries like sudden expansions in microscale channels [7,12,15,18,19], cylindrical microcavities [35], trapezoidal side chambers [14], microbifurcations [28], embedded obstacles inside the flow channel [21,36,37], two counterflowing liquid streams [9] or at the boundary layer between sheath and center stream [22].…”