Lateral Separation of Macromolecules and Polyelectrolytes in Microlithographic Arrays

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel microlithographic device that separates microscopic objects based on their diffusion properties, offering advantages over traditional centrifugation and electrophoresis methods.

Contribution

The paper presents a new separation device design that exploits broken symmetry to differentiate objects by their diffusion constants, enabling transverse separation.

Findings

Effective separation of macromolecules demonstrated

Device can be fabricated with existing microlithography techniques

Advantages over centrifugation and electrophoresis shown

Abstract

A new approach to separation of a variety of microscopic and mesoscopic objects in dilute solution is presented. The approach takes advantage of unique properties of a specially designed separation device (sieve), which can be readily built using already developed microlithographic techniques. Due to the broken reflection symmetry in its design, the direction of motion of an object in the sieve varies as a function of its self-diffusion constant, causing separation transverse to its direction of motion. This gives the device some significant and unique advantages over existing fractionation methods based on centrifugation and electrophoresis.