Abstract
Flow cytometer is a powerful single cell analysis tool that allows multi-parametric study of suspended cells. Most commercial flow cytometers available today are bulky, expensive instruments requiring high maintenance costs and specially trained personnel for operation. Hence, there is a need to develop a low cost, portable alternative that will aid in making this powerful research tool more accessible. In this paper we describe a sheath-less, on-chip flow cytometry system based on the principle of Dean coupled inertial microfluidics. The design takes advantage of the Dean drag and inertial lift forces acting on particles flowing through a spiral microchannel to focus them in 3-D at a single position across the microchannel cross-section. Unlike the previously reported micro-flow cytometers, the developed system relies entirely on the microchannel geometry for particle focusing, eliminating the need for complex microchannel designs and additional microfluidic plumbing associated with sheath-based techniques. In this work, a 10-loop spiral microchannel 100 µm wide and 50 µm high was used to focus 6 µm particles in 3-D. The focused particle stream was detected with a laser induced fluorescence (LIF) setup. The microfluidic system was shown to have a high throughput of 2,100 particles/sec. Finally, the viability of the developed technique for cell counting was demonstrated using SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells. The passive focusing principle and the planar nature of the described design will permit easy integration with existing lab-on-a-chip (LOC) systems.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the University of Cincinnati Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Health Pilot Research Project Training Program of the University of Cincinnati Education and Research Center (T42/OH008432-04). The authors are also grateful to Dr. Girish Kumar for providing cells for the experiments.
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Bhagat, A.A.S., Kuntaegowdanahalli, S.S., Kaval, N. et al. Inertial microfluidics for sheath-less high-throughput flow cytometry. Biomed Microdevices 12, 187–195 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-009-9374-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-009-9374-9