Size-based microfluidic filtration systems can be affected by clogging, which prevents their use in high-throughput and continuous applications. To address these concerns, we have developed two microfluidic lobe filters bioinspired by the filtration mechanism of two species of manta ray. These chips enable filtration of particles around 10–30 μm with precise control and high throughput by using two arrays of equally spaced filter lobes. For each filter design, we investigated multiple inlet flow rates and particle sizes to identify successful operational parameters. Filtration efficiency increases with fluid flow rate, suggesting that particle inertial effects play a key role in lobe filter separation. Microparticle filtration efficiencies up to 99% were obtainable with inlet flow rates of 20 mL min⁻¹. Each filter design successfully increased microparticle concentrations by a factor of two or greater at different inlet flow rates ranging from 6–16 mL min⁻¹. At higher inlet flow rates, ANSYS Fluent simulations of each device revealed a complex velocity profile that contains three local maxima and two inflection points. Ultimately, we show that distances from the lobe array to the closest local maxima and inflection point of the velocity profile can be used to successfully estimate lobe filtration efficiency at each operational flow rate.

中文翻译：

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一种受生物启发的被动微流体叶过滤系统

基于尺寸的微流体过滤系统可能会受到堵塞的影响，这会阻止它们在高通量和连续应用中的使用。为了解决这些问题，我们开发了两种微流体叶片过滤器，其灵感来自两种蝠鲼的过滤机制。这些芯片通过使用两个等距过滤器叶片阵列，能够过滤 10–30 μm 左右的颗粒，并具有精确控制和高通量。对于每个过滤器设计，我们研究了多个入口流速和颗粒大小，以确定成功的操作参数。过滤效率随着流体流速的增加而增加，这表明粒子惯性效应在叶片过滤器分离中起关键作用。微粒过滤效率高达 99%，入口流速为 20 mL min ^-1. ^{在 6–16 mL min -1}的不同入口流速下，每种过滤器设计都成功地将微粒浓度提高了两倍或更多。在更高的入口流速下，每个设备的 ANSYS Fluent 仿真揭示了一个复杂的速度曲线，其中包含三个局部最大值和两个拐点。最终，我们表明，从叶片阵列到最近的局部最大值和速度剖面的拐点的距离可用于成功估计每个操作流速下的叶片过滤效率。