Performance study of microfluidic devices for blood plasma separation-a designer's perspective

In this work, design and experiments on various blood plasma microdevices based on hydrodynamic flow separation techniques is carried out. We study their performance as a function of dependent governing parameters such as flow rate, feed hematocrit, and microchannel geometry. This work focuses on understanding separation phenomena in simple geometries; subsequently, individual simple geometrical parameters and biophysical effects are combined to fabricate hybridized designs, resulting in higher separation efficiencies. The distinctive features of our microfluidic devices are that they employ elevated dimensions (of the order of hundreds of microns), and thereby can be operated continuously over sufficient duration without clogging, while simplicity of fabrication makes them cost effective. The microdevices have been experimentally demonstrated over the entire range of hematocrit (i.e. from Hct 7% to Hct 45%). A high separation efficiency of about (78.34 +/- 2.7)% with pure blood is achieved in our best hybrid design. We believe that the theory and experimental results presented in this study will aid designers and researchers working in the field of blood plasma separation microdevices.