A particle trapping chip using the wide and uniform slit formed by a deformable membrane and air bubble plugs

We present a high-efficient particle trapping chip, where a wide and uniform slit is formed by a deformable membrane barrier with air bubble plugs. The air bubble plugs remained in the extended microchannel during sample filling process, block the particle passage at the both side ends of the membrane, thus all particles flow through the uniform slit gap. Therefore, high-efficient particle trapping without particle loss can be achieved. In the experimental study using 10.3μm-diameter polystyrene beads, the membrane barrier with the air bubble plugs successfully trapped the injected beads with the trapping efficiency of 100% at the flow rate of 10μl/min, while the barrier without the air bubble plugs showed low efficiency of 20%. The present simple and effective particle trapping device is applicable for the high-efficient bioparticle isolation and recovery in the micro total analysis system.