Viscoelastic Fluids-based Microfluidic Devices and Applications

Viscoelastic Fluids-based Microfluidic Devices and Applications – Dr Dan Yuan

Manipulation and separation of micro/nano-objects such as cells are indispensable and crucial in disease diagnostics, environmental science, and chemical and biological assays. Conventionally, centrifugation and filtration are used. However, centrifugation is time-consuming, labour-intensive, and may impair product quality due to the mechanical stress induced by high-speed rotation. In addition to mechanical stresses, filtration is inherently compromised by clogging. Microfluidic techniques have emerged as efficient and powerful but mild and blockage-deterring alternatives for particle/cell manipulation due to their unique advantages of lower cost with higher efficiency and accuracy. However, most of these manipulating methods are performed and studied in Newtonian fluids. In fact, non-Newtonian fluids such as blood, cytoplasm, and many other body fluids, are very ubiquitous in our daily life and in real world issues. Therefore, it is important to investigate particle migration in non-Newtonian fluids to develop a deep understanding of cell behaviours in these body fluids. Dr Dan Yuan explored the unique advantages of particle/cell manipulation using viscoelastic microfluidics, and developed cutting edge microfluidic technologies for particle and cell manipulation including 3D particle focusing, separation and on-chip cell washing, and demonstrated their usefulness in both environment and biomedicine.