Fabrication and Separation of EGaIn Microparticles from Human Blood Based on Dielectrophoresis Force and a W-Type Electrode.

Abstract

Harmful particles such as heavy metal particles in the human body can cause many problems such as kidney stones, gallstones, and cerebrovascular diseases. Therefore, it is critical to separate them from the blood and perform a systematic analysis as early as possible. Here, we apply eutectic gallium indium (EGaIn) microparticles as a model to study the separation of particles from blood, thanks to their properties of low toxicity, excellent degradability, and negligible vapor pressure. In particular, the dielectrophoresis (DEP) separation method is employed to separate EGaIn of different sizes and characteristics in blood. First, the screen-printing method is used to create EGaIn microparticles with diameters of 15, 23, 18, and 11 μm. According to the lifetime test, these microparticles can last more than 1 month, as evidenced by their surface oxidation characteristics. Moreover, a DEP platform with W-type electrodes is developed to sort EGaIn particles from whole human blood. The results show that a sorting efficiency of 95% can be attained, which is similar to the separation efficiency of 98% achieved by finite element analysis (FEA) using COMSOL software based on the orthogonal array experiment method. The proposed study successfully validates the use of the DEP method to separate particles from human blood, providing insights into heavy metal particle separating, drug screening, and cell sorting and potentially broadening the applications in environmental analysis, food engineering, and bioengineering.