Feasibility Study of a Microfluidic Solenoid for Discrete Quantitation of Magnetized Cells

In this paper, a cell quantitation system is proposed based on a new microfluidic solenoid design. The design is simulated in COMSOL and a scaled version of the prototype is built and the induced voltage due to the passage of a magnetic material is measured using a low-noise amplifier and converted to a digital signal using a DSP chip. The simulation results show approximately 16-nV induced voltage across the solenoid and the measurement results for a scaled version of the solenoid outputs 125-mV peak voltage. A microfluidic fabrication process demonstrates a successful prototype of a microfluidic solenoid.