(354i) Lateral Migration and Sorting of Elastic Capsules in Microfluidic Devices

The study of the motion and deformation of capsules and biological cells in microfluidic channels is motivated by a wide range of applications including drug delivery, capsule fabrication, cell sorting and characterization, and its similarity to blood flow in vascular capillaries. Beyond the traditional approaches of solid drilling and glass fabrication, the emergence of 3D printing technologies facilitates considerably the fabrication of microchannels with various cross-sections.

Based on our computational investigation, we propose an optimized microfluidic geometry that can be utilized for separation of capsules and cells with different size. The main advantage of the proposed geometry is its inexpensive fabrication without complicated inner structures, which eliminates the risk of channel clogging. In the talk, we will also describe the dynamics of the lateral migration of capsules and our cell sorting results.