Under a flow rate of 15 ml/h, fractions of cells collected at the inner and middle outlets were quite similar (Fig. 12.4a, b). In contrast, few particles, including both yeast cells and fluorescent particles were found in the outer outlets (Fig. 12.4c, c0). Comparing the fluorescence images and bright field images, we found fluorescent particles were enriched at the inner outlet (Fig. 12.4a, a0) while yeast cells were enriched at the middle outlet (Fig. 12.4b, b0). These results indicate that this approach is capable of separating between rigid and soft particles and can be potentially utilized to separate rigid sickled cells from soft unsickled cells. To evaluate the separation efficiency, five samples were obtained at each outlet and cell concentrations were counted (Fig. 12.5). The triangular points represent the fractions of fluorescent particles to the total amount of two kinds of particle came out from the inner outlets and the circular points represent the fractions of yeast cell to the total amount of two kinds of particle came out from the middle outlet. As the original ratio of the concentration of fluorescent particles to yeast cells is 1:5. The best performance in enrichment of the fluorescent particles and the yeast cells was found at the flow rate of 15 ml/h, which may be associated with the center-directing effect from the deformability-induced lift force. Fig. 12.4 (a–c) Bright field images and (a0–c0) fluorescent images of particles collected at inner outlet, middle outlet and outer outlet, respectively, at a flow rate of 15 ml/h. Samples were adjusted to a same target volume 0 10 ml/h 15 ml/h Inner outlet fluorescent beads Middle outlet yeast cells 20 ml/h 25 ml/h Particle fraction 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 Fig. 12.5 Fractions of fluorescent particles measured at the inner outlet and fraction of yeast cells measured at the middle outlet 86 J. Liu et al.
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