Particle Separation with Deterministic Lateral Displacement (DLD): The Anisotropy Effect

Abstract

Deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a passive and label-free microfluidic separation technique with a strong potential for biological sample preparation purposes. Numerical and experimental models have been proposed so far to predict the particle behavior in DLD channels. However, they do not take into account the influence of the pillar anisotropy that induces a secondary pressure gradient in the direction perpendicular to the main flow. The influence of the pillar geometry on the anisotropy magnitude is presented. We show that anisotropy impacts the trajectory of particles in DLD devices and should be included in predictive models for the critical diameter.

Keywords

• deterministic lateral displacement
• micro and nanoparticle separation
• anisotropy effect