Inertial Microfluidic Cell Separation

Abstract

The ability to rapidly manipulate cells within microfluidic devices has been a fascinating goal for engineers across disciplines over the past two decades. With highly controllable flows and the ability to create microstructures on the same scale as cells, a large variety of technologies to sort and separate cells have been rapidly developed. One of these technologies, inertial focusing, stands out for its ease of use and high throughput. Inertial focusing utilizes passively generated forces within microchannels to align and separate cells based upon numerous factors including size, shape, and deformability of the suspended particles or cells. With so many different technologies, even within the realm of inertial focusing cell separation, it can be difficult to distinguish and choose one for a given application. Here I will attempt to quantify functional differences in separation techniques from both the fundamental perspective and from a perspective of implementation giving perhaps a means of choosing a technology that is right for the application.