Microfluidic particle sorter employing flow splitting and recombining

This paper describes an improved microfluidic device that enables hydrodynamic particle concentration and size-dependent separation to be carried out in a continuous manner. In our previous study, a method for hydrodynamic filtration and sorting of particles was proposed using a microchannel having multiple branch points and side channels, and it was applied for continuous concentration and separation of polymer particles and cells. In the current study, the efficiency of particle sorting was dramatically improved by geometrically splitting fluid flow from a main stream and recombining. With these operations, particles with diameters larger than a specific value move toward one sidewall in the mainstream. This control of particle positions is followed by the perfect particle alignment onto the sidewall, which increases the selectivity and recovery rates without using a liquid that does not contain particles. In this study, a microchannel having one inlet and five outlets was designed and fabricated. By simply introducing particle suspension into the device, concentrations of 2.1-3.0-microm particles were increased 60-80-fold, and they were collected independently from each outlet. In addition, it was demonstrated that the measured flow rates distributed into each side channel corresponded well to the theoretical values when regarding the microchannel network as a resistive circuit.