Numerical Investigation on Geometrical Parameters and Its Influence in Microfluidic Devices for Phenotype Separation of Bacteria

Abstract

Sepsis remains a significant global health challenge, responsible for a high newlinemortality rate due to delayed diagnosis and treatment. Rapid identification and separation of newlinesepsis-causing pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus, from blood samples are critical newlinefor early intervention and effective patient management. Traditional methods such as newlinecentrifugation and membrane filtration have several limitations, including sample handling, newlinelengthy processing times, restricted adaptability, and high sensitivity to operating conditions. newlineMicrofluidic device is increasingly preferred due to their ability to handle minute sample newlinevolumes with high precision and their potential for integration into portable, cost-effective newlinediagnostic platforms. Microfluidics offers various particle separation methods, broadly newlineclassified into passive and active. Understanding fundamental principles of how geometric newlinefactors impact fluid flow, particle movement, and separation effectiveness is necessary to newlinedesign an efficient separation device in microfluidics. Further, the complexity arises as the newlineblood constituents like RBC s, Plasma, fall in the same range of sizes and differ in shapes. newlineAdditionally, the physical properties of fluids and suspended microparticles, along with their newlineinteractions with channel boundaries, determines the separation performance of separation. newlineThe study integrates Deterministic Lateral Displacement (DLD) and Dielectrophoresis newline(DEP) techniques to achieve a two-stage separation process tailored to this application newline