Flow-Rate-Insensitive Plasma Extraction by the Stabilization and Acceleration of Secondary Flow in the Ultralow Aspect Ratio Spiral Channel.

ABSTRACT

Although microfluidic devices have made remarkable strides in blood cell separation, there is still a need for further development and improvement in this area. Herein, we present a novel ultralow aspect ratio (H/W = 136) spiral channel microfluidic device with ordered micro-obstacles for sheathless and flow-rate-insensitive blood cell separation. By introducing ordered micro-obstacles into the spiral microchannels, reduced magnitude fluctuations in secondary flow across different loops can be obtained through geometric confinement. As a result, the unique Dean-like secondary flow can effectively enhance the separation efficiency of particles in different sizes ranging from 3 to 15 µm. Compared to most existing microfluidic devices, our system offers several advantages of easy manufacturing, convenient operation, long-term stability, highly efficient performance (up to 99.70% rejection efficiency, including platelets), and most importantly, insensitivity to cell sizes as well as flow rates (allowing for efficient separation of different-sized blood cells in a wide flow rate from 1.00 to 2.50 mL/min). The unique characteristics, such as ultralow aspect ratio, sequential micro-obstacles, and controlled secondary flow, make our device a promising solution for practical plasma extraction in biomedical research and clinical applications.