A multilayer lateral-flow microfluidic device for particle separation

Particle separation technology plays an important role in a wide range of applications as a critical sample preprocessing step for analysis. In this work, we proposed and fabricated a multilayer lateral-flow particle filtration and separation device based on polydimethylsiloxane molding and transfer bonding techniques. Particle separation capability was demonstrated by 4.5-um polystyrene bead filtration and cancer cell (SK-BR-3) retrieving. This device exhibits higher throughput compared with most active particle separation methods and is less vulnerable to membrane clogging problem. This novel multilayer particle filtration and separation device is expected to find applications in biomedical, environmental and microanalysis fields.