Gravity Applied Particle Separation in Nanoliter Volume Fluid System Toward Complexed Biosample Sorting

Abstract

The separation of target molecules from complexed biosamples such as blood is essential for both biochemical understanding and pathological decision-making. As an alternative to conventional centrifugation, which has critical disadvantages, we suggest microgravitational particle separation under mild conditions to prevent distortion, lysis, and the breakage of biological particles. Polymer particles with similar sizes and different densities were used as models. We determined the optimum operating conditions, including the concentration of a sucrose solution and flow rate, based on Stokes law. A separation efficiency of more than 95% showed the potential of the designed microsystems for complexed biosample sorting.