Sperm Enrichment and Fouling Mitigation in Bubble-Based Acoustofluidic Filtration Microdevice

A Bubble-based Acoustofluidic Filtration Microdevice (BAFM), which utilizes the cross-flow filtration to separate the cells and acoustic streaming to mitigate bio-fouling, is demonstrated its functionality, for the first time. The device is tested with the imbalanced body mixtures of epithelial and sperm cells with significant morphological and cell adhesion differences, which usually cause serious biofouling during filtration. By inducing acoustic streaming, microbubbles are generated and oscillating near the filter surface to expedite the biofouling removal process, achieving effective removal within a mere 0.6 seconds. It shows great performance in cell separation and application potential in forensic sciences and cell biological analysis.