Highly Enriched, Controllable, Continuous Aerosol Sampling Using Inertial Microfluidics and Its Application to Real-Time Detection of Airborne Bacteria

We report a novel microfluidic technique for sampling of aerosols into liquids. The two-phase fluid, sampling air and collecting liquid, forms a stratified flow in the curved microchannel. By passing fluids through the curved region, the particles are transferred from air into the liquid phase by the particle centrifugal and drag forces. This microfluidic-based aerosol-into-liquid sampling system, called the MicroSampler, is driven by particle inertial differences. To evaluate the physical particle collection efficiency of the MicroSampler, we used standard polystyrene-latex (PSL) particles ranging in size from 0.6 to 2.1 mu m and measured particle concentrations upstream and downstream of the MicroSampler with an aerodynamic particle sizer. The cutoff diameter of particle collection was selected controlling the air flow velocity (microfluidic air flow of 0.6 L/min showed a particle collection efficiency of similar to 98% at a particle diameter of 1 mu m), and continuous enriched particle sampling was possible for real-time postprocessing application. With regard to biological collection efficiency, the MicroSampler showed superior microbial recovery (Staphylococcus epidermidis) compared to the conventional BioSampler technique. These results indicate that our MicroSampler can be used as a portable, cost-effective, simple, and continuous airborne microorganism collector for applications in real-time bioaerosol detection.