Flow Guidance of Magnetic Particles by Dipolar Particle Interaction

The authors present a method for flow guidance of magnetic particles in microfluidic devices. Using dipolar particle interactions, the flow of magnetic particles can be manipulated without changing the flow of the carrier liquid. The proposed system operates without any external magnetic gradient fields. Therefore, no electromagnetic components on the microscale are necessary. The method used for the manipulation is deduced from theoretical simulations and tested experimentally. Two different applications are introduced: a particle diverter designed for particle guidance along channel cross-sections and a device for generating a discretized particle flow.