Flow cytometry is a technique capable of optically characterizing biological particles in a high-throughput manner. In flow cytometry, three dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic focusing is critical for accurate and consistent measurements. Due to the advantages of microfluidic techniques, a number of microfluidic flow cytometers with 3D hydrodynamic focusing have been developed in recent decades. How...

A single microfluidic chip consisting of six microfluidic flow-focusing devices operating in parallel was developed to investigate the feasibility of scaling microfluidic droplet generation up to production rates of hundreds of milliliters per hour. The design utilizes a single inlet channel for both the dispersed aqueous phase and the continuous oil phase from which the fluids were distributed...

We report a contraction-expansion array (CEA) microchannel that allows three-dimensional hydrodynamic focusing with a single sheath flow in a single-layer device. The CEA microchannel exploits centrifugal forces acting on fluids travelling along the contraction and expansion regions of the microchannel. Around an entrance of the contraction region, the centrifugal forces induce a secondary flow...

Elasto-inertial focusing in viscoelastic fluids has attracted increasing interest in recent years due to its potential applications in particle counting and sorting. However, current investigations of the elasto-inertial focusing mechanisms have mainly been focused on simple straight channels with little attention being paid to curved channels. Herein, we experimentally explore the elasto-inert...