Deterministic Lateral Displacement-Based Separation of Magnetic Beads and Its Applications of Antibody Recognition

This work presents a magnetic-driven deterministic lateral displacement (m-DLD) microfluidic device. A permanent magnet located at the outlet of the microchannel was used to generate the driving force. Two stages of mirrored round micropillar array were designed for the separation of magnetic beads with three different sizes in turn. The effects of the forcing angle and the inlet width of the micropillar array on the separating efficiency were studied. The m-DLD device with optimal structure parameters shows that the separating efficiencies for the 10 μm, 20 μm and 40 μm magnetic beads are 87%, 89% and 94%, respectively. Furthermore, this m-DLD device was used for antibody recognition and separation among a mixture solution of antibodies. The trajectories of different kinds of magnetic beads coupled with different antigens showed that the m-DLD device could realize a simple and low-cost diagnostic test.