Effects of microchannel geometry and flow rate on particle separation in PFF devices: A numerical analysis

Recently, microfluidic devices have been widely used for separating various particles such as blood cells. Despite the development of numerous passive and active approaches, many challenges still need to be resolved. Most passive methods utilize microchannel geometry and flow fields to sort particles based on size. Therefore, there is a lack of an accurate size-based and density-based particle separation scheme. In the pinched flow fractionation (PFF) method, particle sorting is based on moving particles alongside a narrow channel, and as the different size particles follow different flow streamlines, the size-based particle separation is performed. In this work, the sedimentation pinched flow fractionation is investigated in which the sedimentation force helps to sort particles based on density and size. A narrow channel, two inlets, one for particles and one for buffer fluid, and ۱۲ outlets along a cured channel comprise the presented microfluidic chip. The numerical investigations have been conducted using the finite element method (FEM), and the simulation results agreed with previous experimental results. In the present study, the effect of design parameters, such as the geometry parameters and inlets' flow rate ratio, on the chip's particle separation performance has been investigated to reach high accuracy for particle separation.

کلیدواژه ها:

particle ، separation ، MEMS ، microfluidic ، finite-element method