Particle concentration influences inertial focusing in Multiorifice Flow Fractionation microfluidic devices

Flow Focusing in Microfluidic Devices

This paper presents numerical analysis of the hydrodynamic flow focusing in rectangular microchannels. The low Reynolds number pressure driven flow in symmetric system of crossed channels with three inlets and one outlet is investigated. The numerical model is used to elucidate the origin of broadening of the focused flow sheet observed experimentally close to the side walls of the outlet chann...

Fundamentals of elasto-inertial particle focusing in curved microfluidic channels.

Elasto-inertial focusing in viscoelastic fluids has attracted increasing interest in recent years due to its potential applications in particle counting and sorting. However, current investigations of the elasto-inertial focusing mechanisms have mainly been focused on simple straight channels with little attention being paid to curved channels. Herein, we experimentally explore the elasto-inert...

Parallelization of microfluidic flow-focusing devices.

Microfluidic flow-focusing devices offer excellent control over fluid flow, enabling formation of drops with a narrow size distribution. However, the throughput of microfluidic flow-focusing devices is limited and scale-up through operation of multiple drop makers in parallel often compromises the robustness of their operation. We demonstrate that parallelization is facilitated if the outer pha...

Focusing in Microfluidic Devices

Mechanism governing separation in microfluidic pinched flow fractionation devices

We present a computational investigation of the mechanism governing size-based particle separation in microfluidic pinched flow fractionation. We study the behavior of particles moving through a pinching gap (i.e., a constriction in the aperture of a channel) in the Stokes regime (negligible fluid and particle inertia) as a function of particle size. The constriction aperture is created by a pl...