Microfluidics chip inspired by fish gills for blood cells and serum separation

In this paper, a microfluidic chip inspired by fish gills has been designed and fabricated in order to separate blood cells from serum. This microchip is modeled after fish gills which filter particles from fluids. In this way, the blood passes through a reservoir that contains several parallel rows of filter columns, which perform the filtering action. COMSOL Multiphysics software was used to conduct several simulations to optimize the pressure and velocity parameters of blood entering the microchip, and these parameters were used to determine the appropriate dimensions of the microchip. The simulation results indicate that the microchip is able to completely separate the cells from the serum, assuming a blood flow rate of 134 μl/s. With the help of the proposed filter, blood cells are separated from the plasma after 20 s and the aggregation occurs in the outlet reservoirs. In order to fabricate the microchip, the filter component made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was bonded to the copper substrate. In this paper a new copper to PDMS bonding process is proposed. Copper was chosen as the substrate because it allows the application of voltage to separate particles through the Dielectrophoresis method. The chemical etching method reinforced with noble metals was used to create micro holes on the silicon wafer, which are used to mold PDMS filters with a diameter of several micrometers. The main reservoir with a depth of 20 µm was created by the wet etching method. The reservoir was coated with silane coating and the oxygen plasma was utilized to bond the PDMS filters and the main reservoir. The copper substrate allows the microchip to be used with other electronic devices and circuits on printed circuit boards. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to observe the silane-coated copper surface, the micro holes on the silicon wafer, and the PDMS pillars. The topography and roughness of the copper surface before and after silane coating was evaluated through Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Optical Microscopy (OM) was utilized to observe the separation of the cells from the plasma. The results showed acceptable adhesion between copper and PDMS and good results for serum separation from blood cells.