title: Nanoscale lateral displacement arrays for the separation of exosomes and colloids down to 20 nm.
abstract: Deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) pillar arrays are an efficient technology to sort, separate and enrich micrometre-scale particles, which include parasites, bacteria, blood cells and circulating tumour cells in blood. However, this technology has not been translated to the true nanoscale, where it could function on biocolloids, such as exosomes. Exosomes, a key target of 'liquid biopsies', are secreted by cells and contain nucleic acid and protein information about their originating tissue. One challenge in the study of exosome biology is to sort exosomes by size and surface markers. We use manufacturable silicon processes to produce nanoscale DLD (nano-DLD) arrays of uniform gap sizes ranging from 25 to 235 nm. We show that at low Péclet (Pe) numbers, at which diffusion and deterministic displacement compete, nano-DLD arrays separate particles between 20 to 110 nm based on size with sharp resolution. Further, we demonstrate the size-based displacement of exosomes, and so open up the potential for on-chip sorting and quantification of these important biocolloids.
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Benjamin H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Wunsch
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Joshua T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Stacey M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Gifford
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brink
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Bruce
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.
authors.forename: Robert H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Austin
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.|Department of Genetics and Genomics Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York 10029, USA.
authors.forename: Gustavo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Stolovitzky
authors.affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
authors.forename: Yann
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Astier
mesh_terms: D003102:Colloids; D055354:Exosomes / Q000737:chemistry*; D056656:Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids