随着MEMS技术与分析科学、材料学及生命科学等学科交叉研究的深入,微全分析系统(μTAS)得到了迅速的发展.目前,DNA芯片及电泳分离芯片等的研究较多,而细胞分离芯片的报道较少.Huang和Cheng等报道了介电电泳细胞分离芯片,成功地分离了单核细胞和T细胞,但由于需要特殊缓冲液而使其应用受到限制.
In this work, two kinds of novel microfluidic cells separation chips were described on the principle of crossflow filtration by using micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Whole blood is a complex mixture of. various cells, such as red blood cells( RBC), white blood cells( WBC ) and so on. Separation and collection of different kinds of cells is the required first step for the subsequent clinical and basic research assays. One-level filtration microfluidic chips with three coiled channels spaced by two arrays of parallel microfabricated filtration barriers of post-type or dam-type along the stream, were successfully used to separate and collect RBC and WBC from whole blood via their different sizes. The effects of the dilution times and the length of separation channels with different filtration barriers on RBC separation efficiency were investigated. When the whole blood was diluted by 50 times, the RBC separation efficiency was 91.2% and the WBC separation efficiency was 27.4% by using the microfluidic chip with dam-type filtration barriers of 160 mm long. The WBC separation efficiency was two times more than that by using microfluidic chip based on the dead-end filtration principle. The second kind of microfluidic chip had multilevel filtration barriers of post-type which was used to separate and collect plasma, RBC and WBC from whole blood.