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Miniaturization of Hydrocyclones by High‐Resolution 3D Printing for Rapid Microparticle Separation
Author(s) -
Han Jung Yeon,
Krasniqi Beqir,
Kim Jung,
Keckley Melissa,
DeVoe Don L.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
advanced materials technologies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.184
H-Index - 42
ISSN - 2365-709X
DOI - 10.1002/admt.201901105
Subject(s) - miniaturization , microscale chemistry , nanotechnology , microparticle , materials science , microfabrication , microfluidics , micrometer , particle size , process engineering , mechanical engineering , engineering , medicine , mathematics education , mathematics , alternative medicine , pathology , chemical engineering , fabrication
Hydrocyclones are a simple and powerful particle separation technology, widely used in macroscale industrial processes, with enormous potential for miniaturization. Although recent efforts to shrink hydrocyclones to the centimeter scale have shown great promise for passive and high‐throughput microparticle separations, further miniaturization is constrained by limited understanding of the impact of device size scale and design on separation performance, and challenges in realizing the complex internal structures of hydrocyclones at small size scales using conventional microfabrication techniques. Here, fundamental scaling issues for hydrocyclones with sub‐millimeter critical dimensions are investigated, and the first microscale hydrocyclones with critical feature size as small as 250 µm are demonstrated by taking advantages of 3D printing using stereolithography coupled with digital light processing. The resulting devices are shown to provide high separation efficiency for particles as small as 3.7 µm while operating at high flow rates up to 40 mL min −1 , with scaling analysis suggesting that sub‐micrometer particle separations can be achieved with further miniaturization, potentially making the technology suitable for the rapid isolation and concentration of both inorganic and biological nanoparticles.