We provide a comprehensive review describing the fundamental mechanisms of inertial microfluidics, structure design and applications in biology, medicine and industry.

Conductive elastic composites have been used widely in soft electronics and soft robotics. These composites are typically a mixture of conductive fillers within elastomeric substrates. They can sense strain via changes in resistance resulting from separation of the fillers during elongation. Thus, most elastic composites exhibit a negative piezoconductive effect, i.e. the conductivity decreases under tensile strain. This property is undesirable for stretchable conductors since such composites may become less conductive during deformation. Here, we report a liquid metal-filled magnetorheological elastomer comprising a hybrid of fillers of liquid metal microdroplets and metallic magnetic microparticles. The composite’s resistivity reaches a maximum value in the relaxed state and drops drastically under any deformation, indicating that the composite exhibits an unconventional positive piezoconductive effect. We further investigate the magnetic field-responsive thermal properties of the composite and demonstrate several proof-of-concept applications. This composite has prospective applications in sensors, stretchable conductors, and responsive thermal interfaces.

In this review, we discuss the up-to-date progress of particle migration in viscoelastic fluids mainly from the aspect of applications, laying out a comprehensive perspective on their potential in future lab-on-a-chip platforms.

The upgraded version of intelligent image-activated cell sorting (iIACS) has enabled higher-throughput and more sensitive intelligent image-based sorting of single live cells from heterogeneous populations.