Effect of angle-of-attacks on deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) with symmetric airfoil pillars

Deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a microfluidic technique for size fractionation of particles/cells in continuous flow with a great potential for biological and clinical applications. Growing interest of DLD devices in enabling high-throughput operation for practical applications, such as circulating tumor cell (CTC) separation, necessitates employing higher flow rates, leading to operation at moderate to high Reynolds number (Re) regimes. Recently, it has been shown that symmetric airfoil shaped pillars with neutral angle-of-attack (AoA) can be used for high-throughput design of DLD devices due to their mitigation of vortex effects and preservation of flow symmetry under high Re conditions. While high-Re operation with symmetric airfoil shaped pillars has been established, the effect of AoAs on the DLD performance has not been investigated. In this paper, we have characterized the airfoil DLD device with various AoAs. The transport behavior of microparticles has been observed and analyzed with various AoAs in realistic high-Re. Furthermore, we have modeled the flow fields and anisotropy in a representative airfoil pillar array, for both positive and negative AoA configurations. Unlike the conventional DLD device, lateral displacement has been suppressed with +5° and + 15° AoA configurations regardless of particle sizes. On the other hand, stronger lateral displacement has been seen with -5° and - 15° AoAs. This can be attributed to growing flow anisotropy as Re climbs, and significant expansion or compression of streamlines between airfoils with AoAs. The findings in this study can be utilized for the design and optimization of airfoil DLD microfluidic devices with various AoAs.