Inertial Focusing of Particles and Cells in the Microfluidic Labyrinth Device: Role of Sharp Turns

Abstract Inertial, size-based focusing was investigated in the microfluidic labyrinth device consisting of several U-shaped turns along with circular loops. Turns are associated with tight curvature, and therefore induce strong Dean forces for separating particles, however, systematic studies exploring this possibility do not exist. We characterized the focusing dynamics of different-sized rigid particles, cancer cells and white blood cells over a range of fluid Reynolds numbers Re f . Streak widths of the focused particle streams at all the turns showed intermittent fluctuations which were substantial for smaller particles and at higher Re f . In contrast, cell streaks were less prone to fluctuations. Computational fluid dynamics simulations revealed the existence of strong turn-induced Dean vortices which help explain the intermittent fluctuations seen in particle focusing. Next, we developed a measure of pairwise separability to evaluate the quality of separation between focused streams of two different particle sizes. Using this, we assessed the impact of a single sharp turn on separation. In general, the separability was found to vary significantly as particles traversed the tight-curvature U-turn. Comparing the separability at the entry and exit sections, we found that turns either improved or reduced separation between different-sized particles depending on Re f . Finally, we evaluated the separability at the downstream expansion section to quantify the performance of the labyrinth device in terms of achieving size-based enrichment of particles and cells. Overall, our results show that turns are better for cell focusing and separation given that they are more immune to curvature-driven fluctuations in comparison to rigid particles.