Abstract
Microfluidic separation technology has garnered significant attention over the past decade where particles are being separated at a micro/nanoscale in a rapid, low-cost, and simple manner. Amongst a myriad of separation technologies that have emerged thus far, acoustic microfluidic separation techniques are extremely apt to applications involving biological samples attributed to various advantages, including high controllability, biocompatibility, and non-invasive, label-free features. With that being said, downsides such as low throughput and dependence on external equipment still impede successful commercialization from laboratory-based prototypes. Here, we present a comprehensive review of recent advances in acoustic microfluidic separation techniques, along with exemplary applications. Specifically, an inclusive overview of fundamental theory and background is presented, then two sets of mechanisms underlying acoustic separation, bulk acoustic wave and surface acoustic wave, are introduced and discussed. Upon these summaries, we present a variety of applications based on acoustic separation. The primary focus is given to those associated with biological samples such as blood cells, cancer cells, proteins, bacteria, viruses, and DNA/RNA. Finally, we highlight the benefits and challenges behind burgeoning developments in the field and discuss the future perspectives and an outlook towards robust, integrated, and commercialized devices based on acoustic microfluidic separation.
Highlights
The successful separation of target substances from solutions is a key step of significant importance in a variety of applications, such as biomedical applications, biochemical detection and analysis, food processing, and water treatment [1,2,3,4]
Acoustic waves can be categorized into two types: surface acoustic waves (SAWs) and bulk acoustic waves (BAWs)
Unlike SAWs, which spread along the surface of the material, bulk acoustic waves propagate inside the bulk of the material (Figure 1a)
Summary
The successful separation of target substances from solutions is a key step of significant importance in a variety of applications, such as biomedical applications, biochemical detection and analysis, food processing, and water treatment [1,2,3,4]. The separation of sperm and epithelial cells has the potential to impact forensic DNA analysis of sexual assault evidence [14] To achieve these separation goals, microfluidic separation has the advantage of integrating into various excitation systems, including acoustic, electrical, magnetic, optical, and mechanical systems [9,15,16,17,18]. Acoustic microfluidic separation technology emerges with a combination of strengths that is suitable to separate biological samples effectively: label-free, contactless, and biocompatible Without contact, this technology is able to separate samples based on their different physical properties, such as density, size, and compressibility [18,20,21]. We highlight the biological applications of these techniques and discuss the limitations and perspectives of the acoustic microfluidic separation
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