Issue 17, 2024

Dispersion-free inertial focusing (DIF) for high-yield polydisperse micro-particle filtration and analysis

Abstract

Inertial focusing excels at the precise spatial ordering and separation of microparticles by size within fluid flows. However, this advantage, resulting from its inherent size-dependent dispersion, could turn into a drawback that challenges applications requiring consistent and uniform positioning of polydisperse particles, such as microfiltration and flow cytometry. To overcome this fundamental challenge, we introduce Dispersion-Free Inertial Focusing (DIF). This new method minimizes particle size-dependent dispersion while maintaining the high throughput and precision of standard inertial focusing, even in a highly polydisperse scenario. We demonstrate a rule-of-thumb principle to reinvent an inertial focusing system and achieve an efficient focusing of particles ranging from 6 to 30 μm in diameter onto a single plane with less than 3 μm variance and over 95% focusing efficiency at highly scalable throughput (2.4–30 mL h−1) – a stark contrast to existing technologies that struggle with polydispersity. We demonstrated that DIF could be applied in a broad range of applications, particularly enabling high-yield continuous microparticle filtration and large-scale high-resolution single-cell morphological analysis of heterogeneous cell populations. This new technique is also readily compatible with the existing inertial microfluidic design and thus could unleash more diverse systems and applications.

Graphical abstract: Dispersion-free inertial focusing (DIF) for high-yield polydisperse micro-particle filtration and analysis

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Mar 2024
Accepted
29 Jul 2024
First published
30 Jul 2024

Lab Chip, 2024,24, 4182-4197

Dispersion-free inertial focusing (DIF) for high-yield polydisperse micro-particle filtration and analysis

K. C. M. Lee, B. M. F. Chung, D. M. D. Siu, S. C. K. Ho, D. K. H. Ng and K. K. Tsia, Lab Chip, 2024, 24, 4182 DOI: 10.1039/D4LC00275J

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