Rigid and Elastic Microparticles Detection Using 3-D Suspended Polymeric Microfluidics (SPMF3) Sensor

Microsystems have gathered great interests and shown valuable results in the study of mechanobiology and biophysical analysis of cells due to their properties such as microsystems match cell dimensions, provide growth microenvironment such as in-vivo environment, and facilitate parallel analysis that can be done on cells through integration of other sensors or chemicals at low cost and with low amount of sample use. There are a variety of microsystems that measure cell properties such as physical, mechanical, and chemical. In this paper, a new 3-D suspended polymeric microfluidics (SPMF
³
) platform for microparticles detection is introduced and tested. The principle of the SPMF
³
is based on bending of structure due to flow forces applied to the microcantilever which is modified when microparticles are passing through the suspended microfluidics. The SPMF
³
is less complex and less expensive compared with the other optical, microfluidics, and microcantilever based techniques formerly employed for microparticles and cells. According to the experimental results, the SPMF
³
is highly sensitive to the particles passing through the micro-nozzle without employing an external exciter. One can study and obtain the biophysical and elastic properties of the passing particles such as size, number, and viscoelasticity with the deflection behavior of the microcantilever.