Performance study of microfluidic devices for blood plasma separation—a designer’s perspective

Abstract

In this work, design and experiments on various blood plasma microdevices based on hydrodynamic flow separation techniques is carried out. We study their performance as a function of dependent governing parameters such as flow rate, feed hematocrit, and microchannel geometry. This work focuses on understanding separation phenomena in simple geometries; subsequently, individual simple geometrical parameters and biophysical effects are combined to fabricate hybridized designs, resulting in higher separation efficiencies. The distinctive features of our microfluidic devices are that they employ elevated dimensions (of the order of hundreds of microns), and thereby can be operated continuously over sufficient duration without clogging, while simplicity of fabrication makes them cost effective.