Advances in Microfluidic Chip Structures Based on Hydrodynamics of Efficient Single-Cell Capture

Single-cell analysis is important for early diagnosis and treatment of major diseases, drug screening, and studying physiopathological processes. Microfluidic chips are capable of precisely controlling the microenvironment of single cells and monitoring their behavior in real-time, and have become a powerful tool for single-cell analysis. Single-cell capture is an important step in single-cell analysis. Till now, several microfluidic-chip-based single-cell capture methods have been reported, among which hydrodynamic microfluidic- chip-based single-cell capture has the advantages such as easy operation and high-efficiency of single-cell capture, and thus has received wide attention and has been used by researchers. To comprehensively understand the research status of hydrodynamic microfluidic-chip-based single-cell capture, master the structural design of high -efficiency single-cell capture microfluidic chips, and realize the accurate and rapid analysis of single cells, in this paper, the principle of efficient single-cell capture based on hydrodynamics and the structure of microfluidic chips are reviewed. There are three types of structures according to the structural design including micro-well structures, microcolumn structures and bypass channel structures. The optimization process of single-cell capture microfluidic chips is introduced. The materials, structural features, and single-cell capture efficiency of microfluidic chips are summarized, and the advantages and shortcomings of each single-cell capture structure are analyzed. Finally, the development trend of the hydrodynamic-based microfluidic chip single-cell capture method is prospected.