A nanofilter for fluidic devices by pillar-assisted self-assembly microparticles

We present a nanofilter based on pillar-assisted self-assembly microparticles for efficient capture of bacteria. Under an optimized condition, we simply fill the arrays of microscale pillars with submicron scale polystyrene particles to create a filter with nanoscale pore diameter in the range of 308 nm. The design parameters such as the pillar diameter and the inter-pillar spacing in the range of 5 μm-40 μm are optimized using a multi-physics finite element analysis and computational study based on bi-directionally coupled laminar flow and particle tracking solvers. The underlying dynamics of microparticles accumulation in the pillar array region are thoroughly investigated by studying the pillar wall shear stress and the filter pore diameter. The impact of design parameters on the device characteristics such as microparticles entrapment efficiency, pressure drop, and inter-pillar flow velocity is studied. We confirm a bell-curve trend in the capture efficiency versus inter-pillar spacing. Accordingly, the 10 μm inter-pillar spacing offers the highest capture capability (58.8%), with a decreasing entrapping trend for devices with larger inter-pillar spacing. This is the case that the 5 μm inter-pillar spacing demonstrates the highest pillar wall shear stress limiting its entrapping efficiency. As a proof of concept, fluorescently labeled Escherichia coli bacteria (E. coli) were captured using the proposed device. This device provides a simple design, robust operation, and ease of use. All of which are essential attributes for point of care devices.