Optofluidic nanoparticles sorting by hydrodynamic optical force

This paper reports a microfluidic nanoparticles sorting generator by using optical force and hydrodynamic forces. Nanoparticles ranges in size from 70 nm to 1 μm can be aligned and focused in the core flow stream by hydrodynamic focusing. By injecting light into the microfluidic system, the particles can be subsequently manipulated by the optical forces and liquid Stoke forces. The particles with different sizes and refractive indices can be selected by the optical forces and the drag force, flowing with different traces. It has a great potential in cell and molecule sorting and separating.