Microfluidic device with carbon nanotube channel walls for blood plasma extraction

The human plasma biomarker analysis is promised to be a revolution for disease diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring, but it also presents major technical challenges that needs to be addressed [1]. Plasma extract from whole blood is the first step for plasma biomarker analysis. This paper reports a new microfluidic device with channel walls made of nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (CNxCNT) as a point-of-care device to continuously extract plasma from human whole blood. The cross flow microfiltration principle is applied in this plasma extraction device. The blood sample is transported within the double spiral channels. The plasma diffuses through the porous CNxCNT wall into the spiral plasma channel while blood cells continue to flow inside the spiral blood sample channel [2].