High-throughput concentration of rare malignant tumor cells from large-volume effusions by multistage inertial microfluidics

On-chip concentration of rare malignant tumor cells (MTCs) in malignant pleural effusions (MPEs) with a large volume is challenging. Previous microfluidic concentrators suffer from a low concentration factor (CF) and...

Engineering deformation-free plastic spiral inertial microfluidic system for CHO cell clarification in biomanufacturing

Inertial microfluidics has enabled many impactful high throughput applications. However, devices fabricated in soft elastomer (i.e., polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)) suffer reliability issues due to significant deformation generated by the high pressure...

Basic concepts of biological microparticles isolation by inertia spiral microchannels in simple terms: a review

The microfluidics separation has absorbed wide-ranging attention in recent years due to its outstanding advantages in biological, medical, clinical, and diagnostical cell studies. While conventional separation methods failed to render the acceptable performance, microfluidics sorting methods offer many privileges such as high-throughput, user-friendliness, minimizing sample volumes, cost-efficiency, non-invasive procedures, high precision, improved portability, quick processing, etc. Among the inertial microfluidics approaches such as the straight and curved microchannels, although the spiral microchannels, which are the sorts of passive separations, are complicated in concepts and geometries, they have demonstrated auspicious benefits for this purpose. Thus, numerous studies have strived to explain the principle of particle migrating and forces in these complex microchannels. However, a comprehensive understanding is still necessary. On the other side, it is manifest that the diagnosis and separation of circulating tumor cells from the blood are significant for targeted treatments of this detrimental disease. Therefore, this study aims to review the previous investigations and developments for understanding the circulating tumor cell separation using the spiral microchannels straightforwardly and profoundly. After elucidating the inertial microfluidics and their governing physics in simple terms, we provide insights about spiral microchannels' mechanism and concepts, the secondary flow, the cross-section effects on the separation processes, and finally, the future applications and challenges of this kind of inertial microfluidics. The investigations reveal that new approaches should be conducted to use the spiral microchannels with combined cross-sections. These kinds of microchannels with optimum size and shape of cross-sections can improve the performance efficiently.

Instability of a liquid sheet with viscosity contrast in inertial microfluidics

Flows at moderate Reynolds numbers in inertial microfluidics enable high throughput and inertial focusing of particles and cells with relevance in biomedical applications. In the present work, we consider a viscosity-stratified three-layer flow in the inertial regime. We investigate the interfacial instability of a liquid sheet surrounded by a density-matched but more viscous fluid in a channel flow. We use linear stability analysis based on the Orr–Sommerfeld equation and direct numerical simulations with the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to perform an extensive parameter study. Our aim is to contribute to a controlled droplet production in inertial microfluidics. In the first part, on the linear stability analysis we show that the growth rate of the fastest growing mode $$\xi ^{*}$$ ξ ∗ increases with the Reynolds number $$\text {Re}$$ Re and that its wavelength $$\lambda ^{*}$$ λ ∗ is always smaller than the channel width w for sufficiently small interfacial tension $$\Gamma $$ Γ . For thin sheets we find the scaling relation $$\xi ^{*} \propto mt^{2.5}_{s}$$ ξ ∗ ∝ m t s 2.5 , where m is viscosity ratio and $$t_{s}$$ t s the sheet thickness. In contrast, for thicker sheets $$\xi ^{*}$$ ξ ∗ decreases with increasing $$t_s$$ t s or m due to the nearby channel walls. Examining the eigenvalue spectra, we identify Yih modes at the interface. In the second part on the LBM simulations, the thin liquid sheet develops two distinct dynamic states: waves traveling along the interface and breakup into droplets with bullet shape. For smaller flow rates and larger sheet thicknesses, we also observe ligament formation and the sheet eventually evolves irregularly. Our work gives some indication how droplet formation can be controlled with a suitable parameter set $$\{\lambda ,t_{s},m,\Gamma ,\text {Re}\}$$ { λ , t s , m , Γ , Re } . Graphical Abstract

Editorial for the Special Issue on Inertial Microfluidics

The growing demands for label-free, high throughput processing of biological, environmental, and industrial samples have instigated technical innovations for inflow particle manipulations with better resolution and purity [...]