Microfabricated separator and manipulator of blood cells for health care devices

A microfabricated capillary electrophoresis chip has been recently developed and many researchers have reported its attractive potentials such as the drastic increase of speed, reduced sample volumes, higher resolutions and so forth. Furthermore the more aggressive strategy is to integrate a variety of components of analysis system on a chip and has been rapidly developed as so-called "/spl mu/-TAS (micro total analysis system)", which is composed of microchannel network for sample pre- and post treatment, chemical reactions and separations and also detection systems like bio/chemical sensors, microoptics and microelectronic devices. In order to achieve the health care device that allows short-time inspection of human body by analyzing a slight amount of body fluid like blood, urine or saliva, we have been developing the micro analysis devices, and so far on-chip analysis of blood cells and serum have been studied based on micro-capillary electrophoresis chips. In this article, for the purpose of on-chip cell and/or particle separation and manipulation, (1) a separation of the serum and blood cells from the whole blood using a centrifugal chip, and (2) cell trapping using interdigitated electrodes have been investigated.