Deformability of red blood cells affects their velocity in deterministic lateral displacement devices

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a strong increase of interest in mechanical particle separation in structured microfluidic devices. Particular examples are enrichment of rare cells in blood (e.g. cancer cells) or separation of complex mixtures of suspended particles. In many cases, particles are separated based on their size, for example white and red blood cells (RBCs). A less common idea is deformability-based sorting of particles of the same size – an approach relevant for malaria detection where the infected RBCs are usually more rigid than their healthy counterparts. We have recently shown that the trajectories of RBCs in deterministic lateral displacement devices strongly depend on their rigidity. In the present article, we investigate – via computer simulations based on the immersed-boundary, lattice-Boltzmann and finite-element methods – the RBC velocity and show that it is significantly affected by the cells’ deformability.