Enhancement of separation efficiency on continuous magnetophoresis by utilizing L/T-shaped microchannels

In this article a novel design of on-chip continuous magnetophoretic separator was proposed by utilizing the magnetic field and L-turning/T-junction effect of the flow field for high throughput applications. The motion of the magnetic bead was simulated based on Lagrangian tracking method and the separation efficiency was calculated according to the trajectories. Impact parameters including geometrical configuration, fluid velocity, magnetic flux density, magnetic bead size, and temperature on separation efficiency were discussed. The results show that both the L- and T-microchannel separators have higher separation efficiency as compared with the conventional straight-microchannel separator because of the L-turning/T-junction effect of the flow field. The separation efficiencies for L- and T-microchannel separators are 63.4 and 100%, respectively, while it is only 43.7% for straight-microchannel separator at the same conditions. Above a critical flow rate the separation efficiency drops drastically from nearly 100% to zero while this decrease is much slower for T-shaped configurations. The separation efficiency increases initially with the increase of the external magnetic flux density and keeps nearly constant at high magnetic flux density owing to saturated magnetization of the beads. It is also found that both the magnetic bead diameter and fluid temperature have great effect on the separation efficiency. The L/T-microchannel separators presented in this article are simple and efficient for magnetophoretic separation at high flow rates and thus useful for the high-efficiency on-chip enrichment of analytes with very low concentrations.