Issue 15, 2016

Multiplexing slanted spiral microchannels for ultra-fast blood plasma separation

Abstract

Blood and blood products are critical components of health care. Blood components perform distinct functions in the human body and thus the ability to efficiently fractionate blood into its individual components (i.e., plasma and cellular components) is of utmost importance for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Although conventional approaches like centrifugation and membrane filtration for blood processing have been successful in generating relatively pure fractions, they are largely limited by factors such as the required blood sample volume, component purity, clogging, processing time and operation efficiency. In this work, we developed a high-throughput inertial microfluidic system for cell focusing and blood plasma separation from small to large volume blood samples (1–100 mL). Initially, polystyrene beads and blood cells were used to investigate the inertial focusing performance of a single slanted spiral microchannel as a function of particle size, flow rate, and blood cell concentration. Afterwards, blood plasma separation was conducted using an optimised spiral microchannel with relatively large dimensions. It was found that the reject ratio of the slanted spiral channel is close to 100% for blood samples with haematocrit (HCT) values of 0.5% and 1% under an optimal flow rate of 1.5 mL min−1. Finally, through a unique multiplexing approach, we built a high-throughput system consisting of 16 spiral channels connected together, which can process diluted samples with a total flow rate as high as 24 mL min−1. The proposed multiplexed system can surmount the shortcomings of previously reported microfluidic systems for plasma separation and cell sorting in terms of throughput, yield and operation efficiency.

Graphical abstract: Multiplexing slanted spiral microchannels for ultra-fast blood plasma separation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
02 Jun 2016
Accepted
17 Jun 2016
First published
20 Jun 2016

Lab Chip, 2016,16, 2791-2802

Multiplexing slanted spiral microchannels for ultra-fast blood plasma separation

M. Rafeie, J. Zhang, M. Asadnia, W. Li and M. E. Warkiani, Lab Chip, 2016, 16, 2791 DOI: 10.1039/C6LC00713A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements