The
extraction or isolation of biological entities on a microfluidic
platform has gained considerable attention in disease diagnostics,
biomedical research, and point-of-care applications. The isolation
of platelet-poor plasma from blood is the first and an essential step
for applications in coagulation studies. The widely known clinical
methods of platelet-poor plasma separation are based on centrifugation,
which require a long processing time, high power, skilled personnel,
and are incompatible with point-of-care devices. The microdevice utilized
in this study facilitates the employment of various biophysical phenomena,
hydrodynamic forces acting on cells, and geometrical features of the
microdevice for its operation. The developed microdevice is compact
in size, easy to fabricate, reliable, and exhibits clog-free operation.
The microdevice isolates platelet-poor plasma with a purity of 94.7
± 1.90%, having a platelet count of 968 ± 15 per μL
plasma, while operating at an inlet flow rate of 0.4 mL/min. Furthermore,
biological assessment of the platelet-poor plasma extracted from the
microdevice confirms that the sample is completely free from white
blood cells and have no impact on the shape and size of the platelets
after microfluidic processing.