Wall-Induced Non-inertial Lift in Electrophoresis for Continuous Particle Separation

We present in this talk a novel continuous-flow electrokinetic method for particle separation based on intrinsic properties which may include size, surface charge, shape and potentially deformability. This method utilizes the wall-induced non-inertial lift force to deflect a sheath flow-focused particle mixture to property-dependent positions in a laminar flow through a straight microchannel. It is demonstrated through both a binary and a ternary separation of polymer particles by size. A numerical model is also developed to understand this separation and to study the parametric effects on it. The numerical predictions are found to agree reasonably with the experimental observations.