Unidirectional particle transport in microfluidic chips operating in a tri-axial magnetic field for particle concentration and bio-analyte detection

Abstract

The Controlled transport of tiny particles in a microfluidic environment has attracted the attention of numerous researchers in the field of lab-on-a-chip. In this work, for the first time, a fully operational microfluidic chip composed of asymmetric magnetic tracks that unidirectionally transport multiple magnetic particles synced with a general tri-axial magnetic field is proposed. In this innovative chip, the particle motion is analogous to the electron transport in electrical diodes, with similar controllability and automation levels not seen in other single-particle manipulation systems. The vertical bias component of the magnetic field by providing a repulsive force between the particles and preventing undesired cluster formation, makes the proposed chip even more similar to the electrical circuits. Additionally, the chip functions as a highly sensitive biosensor capable of detecting extremely low levels of DNA fragments using ligand-functionalized magnetic beads. The uniqueness of the proposed sensor lies in the introduction of a novel particle/analyte concentrator based on the proposed diodes, which enhances its detection sensitivity. This sensitivity is even further enhanced by a single-particle and pair detection image processing code. Furthermore, the background noise is reduced by eliminating the unwanted bead cluster formation commonly observed in previous works. The proposed device serves as a high-throughput unidirectional transport system at the single-particle resolution, offering sensitive bio-detection with many applications in biomedicine.