Sorting Concentrated Suspensions: Particle Interactions, Emergent Behavior, and Implications for Microfluidic Separations

We present results from experiments and simulation developing a better understanding of systems of particles whose dynamics are coupled to each other through external fields (e.g. electric, hydrodynamic) and/or intrinsic properties (e.g. permanent charge). Focusing on a few real world examples, we show that particle-particle interactions lead to emergent behavior that is not seen in single-particle analyses and which has profound implications for the design of separation technologies that operate robustly with real, concentrated samples.