Microfluidic Device for Efficient Airborne Bacteria Capture and Enrichment

Highly efficient capture and enrichment is always the key for rapid analysis of airborne pathogens. Herein we report a simple microfluidic device which is capable of fast and efficient airborne bacteria capture and enrichment. The device was validated with Escherichia coli (E. con) and Mycobacterium smegmatis. The results showed that the efficiency can reach close to 100% in 9 min. Compared with the traditional sediment method, there is also great improvement with capture limit. In addition, various flow rate and channel lengths have been investigated to obtain the optimized condition. The high capture and enrichment might be due to the chaotic vortex flow created in the microfluidic channel by the staggered herringbone mixer (SHM) structure, which is also confirmed with flow dynamic mimicking. The device is fabricated from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), simple, cheap, and disposable, perfect for field application, especially in developing countries with very limited modern instruments.