A microchannel-based aerosol size separator that separates submicron aerosols according to particle inertial differences and Dean vortices in the airflow was developed for use in low-cost, portable, real-time aerosol collectors, detectors, concentrators and other such devices. The microfluidic inertial separator was furthermore applied to simultaneously separate airborne microorganisms by size,...

*Correspondence: Dino Di Carlo, Microfluidics Biotechnology Laboratory, Department of Bioengineering, University of California Los Angeles, 420 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, USA [email protected]; Gaurav Sant, Laboratory for the Chemistry of Construction Materials (LC), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Los Angeles, 420 Westwood Plaza, Los Angele...

Isolation of low abundance proteins or rare cells from complex mixtures, such as blood, is required for many diagnostic, therapeutic and research applications. Current affinity-based protein or cell separation methods use binary 'bind-elute' separations and are inefficient when applied to the isolation of multiple low-abundance proteins or cell types. We present a method for rapid and multiplex...

Detection of bacteria in bloodstream infections and their antibiotic susceptibility patterns is critical to guide therapeutic decision-making for optimal patient care. Current culture-based assays are too slow (>48 h), leading to excessive up-front use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and/or incorrect antibiotic choices due to resistant bacteria, each with deleterious consequences for patient care...

Passive and label-free isolation of viable target cells based on intrinsic biophysical cellular properties would allow for cost savings in applications where molecular biomarkers are known as well as potentially enable the separation of cells with little-to-no known molecular biomarkers. We have demonstrated the purification of adrenal cortical progenitor cells from digestions of murine adrenal...

This work presents a detailed numerical investigation on the required development length (L=L/B) in laminar Newtonian fluid flow microchannels with rectangular cross section and different aspect ratios (AR). The advent of new microfluidic technologies shifted practical Reynolds numbers (Re) to range unitary (and even lower) orders magnitude, i.e., creeping conditions. Therefore, accurate estima...

Inertial navigation systems are of the most important and practical systems in determining the velocity, position and attitude of the vehicles and different equipment. In these systems, three accelerometers and three gyroscopes are used to measure linear accelerations and angular velocities of vehicles, respectively. By using the output of these sensors and special inertial algorithms in differ...

Here we describe a continuous particle focusing and separation system taking advantage of microscale physics but with throughput comparable to macroscale systems. The device simply consists of a single asymmetrically curved channel with tuned dimensions and flow conditions. Unlike mechanical filters, deformable and rigid particles are shown to focus and separate with equal efficiency. Additiona...

Blood is a highly complex bio-fluid with cellular components making up >40% of the total volume, thus making its analysis challenging and time-consuming. In this work, we introduce a high-throughput size-based separation method for processing diluted blood using inertial microfluidics. The technique takes advantage of the preferential cell focusing in high aspect-ratio microchannels coupled wit...