A Microfluidic Device for Plasma Separation from Blood Using Acoustic Microvortex

Overview

Human blood plasma has shed light on better diagnostics and treatment towards hundreds of diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. However, separation of plasma from blood is crucial as hemolysis occurs (the rupture of blood cells and release of hemoglobin) leading to the contamination and release of different biological substances. In my project, a novel microfluidic technology (acoustic microvortex) for plasma separation from whole blood solution was successfully developed. It relies on the principle of air bubble induced acoustic microstreaming to capture and filter out the blood cells from the blood sample, resulting in pure plasma at the outlet of the microchannel. By utilizing different physical and hydrodynamic properties of blood cells and plasma, I was able to successfully separate plasma from the rest of the blood components. Experiments demonstrated this device able to successfully separate plasma from a whole blood solution with a 31.8% yield and 99.9% efficiency, comparable with a centrifuge but significantly higher than the other microfluidic technologies for blood plasma separation. This device has many advantages over the current plasma separation technologies: high separation yield and efficiency, no channel clogging, no moving part, inexpensive, small, easy to integrate with downstream detection, no blood dilution required, etc.

Competition history

• AJAS 2019 Category not listed

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