Abstract
The capability of isolating and sorting specific types of cells is crucial in life science, particularly for the early diagnosis of lethal diseases and monitoring of medical treatments. Among all the micro-fluidics techniques for cell sorting, inertial focusing combined with the laminar vortex technology is a powerful method to isolate cells from flowing samples in an efficient manner. This label-free method does not require any external force to be applied, and allows high throughput and continuous sample separation, thus offering a high filtration efficiency over a wide range of particle sizes. Although rather recent, this technology and its applications are rapidly growing, thanks to the development of new chip designs, the employment of new materials and microfabrication technologies. In this review, a comprehensive overview is provided on the most relevant works which employ inertial focusing and laminar vortex technology to sort particles. After briefly summarizing the other cells sorting techniques, highlighting their limitations, the physical mechanisms involved in particle trapping and sorting are described. Then, the materials and microfabrication methods used to implement this technology on miniaturized devices are illustrated. The most relevant evolution steps in the chips design are discussed, and their performances critically analyzed to suggest future developments of this technology.
Highlights
Many research studies in the biomedical field need to analyze individually specific cell types or micro-particles, contained in heterogeneous samples
We focus on the inertial sorting combined with microscale laminar vortices technology, by first explaining the physical mechanisms underlying inertial focusing
The core of the sorting device based on inertial focusing and laminar vortex technology usually consists of a rectangular cross-section micro-channel with an expansion
Summary
Many research studies in the biomedical field need to analyze individually specific cell types or micro-particles, contained in heterogeneous samples. The secondary flow effect strongly depends on the particle size; when two different particles are injected into a curved channel, they can be separated based on their different equilibrium positions On this basis, Di Carlo et al have demonstrated the focusing and sorting of cells under laminar flow using a serpentine pattern [12]. The reviews of Sajeesh et al [63] and Shields et al [15] are focused on micro-fluidics for particle sorting Both of them provide to the reader a very comprehensive panorama of the developments in LoC cell sorting, reserving one section to the passive and label-free methods, but without mentioning the vortex technology, which has been only recently developed. Only the works strictly inherent to inertial focusing in combination with laminar vortices are treated, in order to provide to the reader a linear and clear picture of this technique, serving as a basis for future improvements
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