title: Microstructure-induced helical vortices allow single-stream and long-term inertial focusing.
abstract: Fluid inertia has been used to position microparticles in confined channels because it leads to precise and predictable particle migration across streamlines in a high-throughput manner. To focus particles, typically two inertial effects have been employed: inertial migration of particles in combination with geometry-induced secondary flows. Still, the strong scaling of inertial effects with fluid velocity or channel flow rate have made it challenging to design inertial focusing systems for single-stream focusing using large-scale microchannels. Use of large-scale microchannels (≥100 μm) reduces clogging over long durations and could be suitable for non-single-use flow cells in cytometry systems. Here, we show that microstructure-induced helical vortices yield single-stream focusing of microparticles with continuous and robust operation. Numerical and experimental results demonstrate how structures contribute to improve focusing in these larger channels, through controllable cross-stream particle migration, aided by locally-tuned secondary flows from sequential obstacles that act to bring particles closer to a single focusing equilibrium position. The large-scale inertial focuser developed here can be operated in a high-throughput manner with a maximum throughput of approximately 13,000 particles per s.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California NanoSystems Institute, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Aram J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.forename: Dianne
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pulido
authors.forename: Justin C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Oka
authors.forename: Hamed
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Amini
authors.forename: Mahdokht
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Masaeli
authors.forename: Dino
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Di Carlo
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009068:Movement; D010316:Particle Size