Numerical study on the complete separation of blood cells using the integrated dielectrophoretic-photophoretic method in a new microchannel

In the present study, a numerical simulation was conducted to investigate the separation of blood cells using an integrated dielectrophoretic-photophoretic method in a new microfluidic device. In this simulation, the migration behavior of human blood cells under laser radiation with a wavelength of 522 nm and in the presence of fluid flow has been investigated. Studies show that the photophoretic migration of red cells under the irradiation of laser beam is higher than platelets and other blood cells, so that the magnitude of the applied photoelectric force on the red blood cells has been calculated about 9 times that of the white blood cells under the irradiation of laser beam of 50 μm. In this separation using photophoretic forces, red cells were first separated from the platelets and white cells. Subsequently, using the hydrodynamic forces induced by the fluid on the particles and the dielectrophoretic forces, the separation of the platelets from the white blood cells was carried out in different branches of the microchannel. In this study, the dielectrophoretic forces were created using electrode arrays, located on the one side of the microchannel of the microfluidic device. The combination of dielectrophoretic and photophoretic methods has led to a reduction in the magnitude of the required peak to peak voltage for electrodes to a remarkable magnitude of 3v. The proposed design, in addition to high separation efficiency, has a negligible cell loss, so that it can be used as an effective method in many diagnostic processes and medical applications.