title: Continuous sheath-free magnetic separation of particles in a U-shaped microchannel.
abstract: Particle separation is important to many chemical and biomedical applications. Magnetic field-induced particle separation is simple, cheap, and free of fluid heating issues that accompany electric, acoustic, and optical methods. We develop herein a novel microfluidic approach to continuous sheath-free magnetic separation of particles. This approach exploits the negative or positive magnetophoretic deflection to focus and separate particles in the two branches of a U-shaped microchannel, respectively. It is applicable to both magnetic and diamagnetic particle separations, and is demonstrated through the sorting of 5 μm and 15 μm polystyrene particles suspended in a dilute ferrofluid.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0921, USA.
authors.forename: Litao
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Xiangchun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xuan