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Microfluidic focusing of microparticles utilizing negative magnetophoresis and oscillatory flow

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Abstract

Focusing of biological particles has important applications in the fields of biology, medicine, chemistry and environment. The emergence of microfluidic technology has brought new opportunities for the manipulation of biological particles. However, existing methods generally produce a relatively large shear stress or thermal effect on biological particles, which may cause negative biological effects during manipulation, especially for sensitive bioparticles. Herein, we propose a novel strategy for microfluidic focusing of microparticles based on negative magnetophoresis and oscillatory flow. A simple and efficient simulation model is first developed to calculate the motion of particles under magnetic field and fluid field. The non-monotonic size dependence of particle focusing is then revealed and elaborately analyzed. Furthermore, the effects of oscillatory flow field and magnetic field on particle focusing are quantitatively investigated and the particle size range for effective focusing in our proposed chip is provided. The proposed strategy of microfluidic focusing can guide the real applications such as enrichment and separation of sensitive biological particles.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11802054), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China (DUT21YG127, DUT20YG113), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M651106).

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Author notes

  1. Chun-Dong Xue and Jia-Ming Zhao have contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Optoelectronic Engineering and Instrumentation Science, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, People’s Republic of China

    Chun-Dong Xue, Jia-Ming Zhao, Yong-Jiang Li & Kai-Rong Qin

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, People’s Republic of China

    Zhong-Ping Sun

  3. Faculty of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, People’s Republic of China

    Jing-Tong Na

Authors
  1. Chun-Dong Xue
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  2. Jia-Ming Zhao
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  3. Zhong-Ping Sun
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  4. Jing-Tong Na
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  5. Yong-Jiang Li
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  6. Kai-Rong Qin
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Contributions

C.D. Xue: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing—Review & Editing; J.M. Zhao: Investigation, Writing—Original Draft; Z.P. Sun: Data Curation; J.T. Na: Formal analysis; Y.J. Li: Writing—Review & Editing; K. R. Qin: Supervision, Writing—Review & Editing.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chun-Dong Xue or Kai-Rong Qin.

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Xue, CD., Zhao, JM., Sun, ZP. et al. Microfluidic focusing of microparticles utilizing negative magnetophoresis and oscillatory flow. Microfluid Nanofluid 25, 97 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-021-02497-w

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