High-Efficient Microfluidic Single-Cell Trapping and Arraying with Absolute Sequential Capture and High Success Rate of Perfect Capture

Abstract

Methodological improvement to single-cell manipulation is critical for exploring the fundamentals of cellular life and unraveling biological complexity. Although micro-manipulation technologies capable of precise cell localization have been widely established, scaling existing platforms for highly efficient single-cell immobilization without sacrificing cell viability and sample quantity has proven challenging. Here, a highly efficient single-cell trapping and arraying approach is introduced by advancing the performance of a microfluidic mechanical trapping chip. The chip can achieve representative single-cell capture with over 99% efficiency and at least a 75% success rate of perfect capture, a precisely controlled single-cell array, absolute sequential cell captures without cell loss, and the maintenance of high cell viability during the whole manipulation process. This approach enables diverse single-cell trapping, large-scale arraying manipulations, and dynamic cellular and molecular analysis, and offers a path toward the development of high-performance single-cell systems.