A Cascaded Dual Spiral Microfluidic Chip for Continuous Separation of Multicomponent Microparticles

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Microfluidics
• Particle Separation

Background:

• Inertial microfluidics enables high-throughput, label-free particle separation.
• Conventional methods struggle with multicomponent mixtures and operational complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a simplified cascaded microfluidic system for separating three particle types.
• To overcome limitations of single channels and complex traditional cascaded systems.

Main Methods:

• A cascaded dual spiral microfluidic chip utilizing passive flow resistance matching.
• Single syringe pump operation without sheath flow.
• An adaptive flow resistance network for differential particle extraction.

Main Results:

• Continuous separation of 15 µm, 10 µm, and 5 µm microparticles achieved at 1.6 mL/min.
• 92% recovery rate for 15 µm particles.
• Over 98% and 99% purity for 10 µm and 5 µm particles, respectively.

Conclusions:

• The passive fluidic architecture simplifies cascaded sorting.
• Offers a robust solution for complex multicomponent sample preprocessing.
• Demonstrates efficient and label-free separation of multiple particle types.