Scalable high-throughput microfluidic separation of magnetic microparticles

Surface-engineered magnetic microparticles are used in chemical and biomedical engineering due to their ease of synthesis, high surface-to-volume ratio, selective binding, and magnetic separation. To separate them from fluid suspensions, existing methods rely on the magnetic force introduced by the local magnetic field gradient. However, this strategy has poor scalability because the magnetic field gradient decreases rapidly as one moves away from the magnets. Here, we present a scalable high-throughput magnetic separation strategy using a rotating permanent magnet and two-dimensional arrays of micromagnets. Under a dynamic magnetic field, nickel micromagnets allow the surrounding magnetic microparticles to self-assemble into large clusters and effectively propel themselves through the flow. The collective speed of the microparticle swarm reaches about two orders of magnitude higher than the gradient-based separation method over a wide range of operating frequencies and distances from a rotating magnet.