Advances in Technical Assessment of Spiral Inertial Microfluidic Devices Toward Bioparticle Separation and Profiling: A Critical Review

Separation of micro- and nano-sized bioparticles is essential for efficient diagnostics, chemical and biological analyses, drug development, food and chemical processing, and environmental monitoring. However, most of the currently available bio-separation techniques are based on the membrane filtration approach, whose efficiency is restricted by membrane-related disadvantages, including pore size, surface charge density, and biocompatibility, which results in a reduction in the isolation resolution. To address these issues, till now, many microfluidic devices have been developed for particle/cell profiling due to their excellent sensitivity and specificity, less sample consumption, shortened processing time, and high throughput features. Of the various microfluidic systems, the spiral inertial microfluidic technique has recently attracted attention as an innovative strategy and advanced cutting-edge technology toward bioparticle separation. Depending on the needs of the microfluidic device, the spiral inertial chip can be customized to separate bioparticles owing to their sizes and different shapes. In this review, we discuss the kinematics of microchannel particle separation mechanisms, recent developments in the inertial microfluidic device realm, and their applications for the separation of several types of bioparticles, including blood cells, stem cells, sperm cells, pathogens, and algae. Finally, we highlight challenges and economical perspectives associated with guidelines for further development of spiral inertial microfluidic devices in the future.