We have investigated the focusing and dynamics of non-spherical polymeric particles in microfluidic flows at finite Reynolds number. The rotational diameter, D_max, of a particle, regardless of its cross-sectional shape, was found to determine the final focused position, except for the case of asymmetric disks. Additionally, elongated particles with larger D_max exhibited longer residence times in a horizontal orientation than those with smaller D_max. These findings inform approaches to hydrodynamically control shaped and barcoded particles for multiplexed biochemical assays.

This article presents free-floating three-dimensional (3D) microstructure fabrication in a microfluidic channel using direct fine-tuned grayscale image lithography. The image is designed as a freeform shape and is composed of gray shades as light-absorbing features. Gray shade levels are modulated through multiple reflections of light in a digital micromirror device (DMD) to produce different height formations. Whereas conventional photolithography has several limitations in producing grayscale colors on photomask features, our method focuses on a maskless, single-shot process for fabrication of freeform 3D micro-scale shapes. The fine-tuned gray image is designed using an 8-bit grayscale color; thus, each pixel is capable of displaying 256 gray shades. The pattern of the UV light reflecting on the DMD is transferred to a photocurable resin flowing through a microfluidic channel. Here, we demonstrate diverse free-floating 3D microstructure fabrication using fine-tuned grayscale image lithography. Additionally, we produce polymeric microstructures with locally embedded gray encoding patterns, such as grayscale-encoded microtags. This functional microstructure can be applied to a biophysical detection system combined with 3D microstructures. This method would be suitable for fabricating 3D microstructures that have a specific morphology to be used for particular biological or medical applications.

Fast and accurate interrogation of complex samples containing diseased cells or pathogens is important to make informed decisions on clinical and public health issues. Inertial microfluidics has been increasingly employed for such investigations to isolate target bioparticles from liquid samples with size and/or deformability-based manipulation. This phenomenon is especially useful for the clinic, owing to its rapid, label-free nature of target enrichment that enables further downstream assays. Inertial microfluidics leverages the principle of inertial focusing, which relies on the balance of inertial and viscous forces on particles to align them into size-dependent laminar streamlines. Several distinct microfluidic channel geometries (e.g., straight, curved, spiral, contraction-expansion array) have been optimized to achieve inertial focusing for a variety of purposes, including particle purification and enrichment, solution exchange, and particle alignment for on-chip assays. In this review, we will discuss how inertial microfluidics technology has contributed to improving accuracy of various assays to provide clinically relevant information. This comprehensive review expands upon studies examining both endogenous and exogenous targets from real-world samples, highlights notable hybrid devices with dual functions, and comments on the evolving outlook of the field.