Sizing, Fractionation and Mixing of Biological Objects Via Microfabricated Devices

Abstract

One aspect of micro and nanofabrication that has not been exploited a great deal has been the ability to make structures to probe and separate complex mixtures using designed environments. We will give three brief examples of such second-generation uses of microfabrication, as opposed to simply shrinking the size of the vessels or tubes used in macroscopic lab environments. The three examples chosen are blood cell fractionation and cell sorting, asymmetric brownian motion fractionation and ultra-high speed fluid mixing.