Correction: High-throughput cell focusing and separation via acoustofluidic tweezers.

Correction for 'High-throughput cell focusing and separation via acoustofluidic tweezers' by Mengxi Wu et al., Lab Chip, 2018, 18, 3003-3010, DOI: .

High-throughput cell focusing and separation via acoustofluidic tweezers.

Separation of particles and cells is an important function in many biological and biomedical protocols. Although a variety of microfluidic-based techniques have been developed so far, there is clearly still a demand for a precise, fast, and biocompatible method for separation of microparticles and cells. By combining acoustics and hydrodynamics, we have developed a method which we integrated into three-dimensional acoustofluidic tweezers (3D-AFT) to rapidly and efficiently separate microparticles and cells into multiple high-purity fractions. Compared with other acoustophoresis methods, this 3D-AFT method significantly increases the throughput by an order of magnitude, is label-free and gently handles the sorted cells. We demonstrate not only the separation of 10, 12, and 15 micron particles at a throughput up to 500 µl min-1 using this 3D-AFT method, but also the separation of erythrocytes, leukocytes, and cancer cells. This 3D-AFT method is able to meet various separation demands thus offering a viable alternative with potential for clinical applications.

Nonlocal Effects and Slip Heat Flow in Nanolayers.

Guyer-Krumhansl (G-K) equation is a promising macroscopic model to explore heat transport in nanoscale. In the present work, a new nonlocal characteristic length is proposed by considering the effects of heat carriers-boundaries interactions to modify the nonlocal term in G-K equation, and a slip heat flux boundary condition is developed based on the local mean free path of heat carriers. Then an analytical solution for heat flux across 2-D nanolayers and an in-plane thermal conductivity model are obtained based on the modified G-K equation and the slip heat flux boundary. The predictions of the present work are in good agreement with our numerical results of direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) for argon gas nanolayer and the available experimental data for silicon thin layers. The results of this work may provide theoretical support for actual applications of G-K equation in predicting the thermal transport properties of nanolayers.

Influence of Environmental Factors on the Adsorption Capacity and Thermal Conductivity of Silica Nano-Porous Materials.

In this work, the influence of temperature and humidity environment on the water vapor adsorption capacity and effective thermal conductivity of silica nano-porous material is conducted within a relative humidity range from 15% to 90% at 25 °C, 40 °C and 55 °C, respectively. The experiment results show that both the temperature and relative humidity have significant influence on the adsorption capacity and effective thermal conductivity of silica nano-porous materials. The adsorption capacity and effective thermal conductivity increase with humidity because of the increases of water vapor concentration. The effective thermal conductivity increases linearly with adsorption saturation capacity at constant temperature. Because adsorption process is exothermic reaction, the increasing temperature is not conducive to the adsorption. But the effective thermal conductivity increases with the increment of temperature at the same water uptake because of the increment of water thermal conductivity with temperature Geometric models and unit cell structure are adopted to predict the effective thermal conductivity and comparisons with the experimental result are made, and for the case of moist silica nano-porous materials with high porosity no quantitative agreement is found. It is believed that the adsorbed water will fill in the nano-pores and gap and form lots of short cuts, leading to a significant reduction of the thermal resistance.

Study on Unit Cell Models and the Effective Thermal Conductivities of Silica Aerogel.

In this paper, two modified unit cell models, truncated octahedron and cubic array of intersecting square rods with 45-degree rotation, are developed in consideration of the tortuous path of heat conduction in solid skeleton of silica aerogel. The heat conduction is analyzed for each model and the expressions of effective thermal conductivity of the modified unit cell models are derived. Considering the random microstructure of silica aerogel, the probability model is presented. We also discuss the effect of the thermal conductivity of aerogel backbone. The effective thermal conductivities calculated by the proposed probability model are in good agreement with available experimental data when the density of the aerogel is 110 kg/m3.

The Calculation of Thermal Conductivities by Three Dimensional Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Method.

Three dimensional direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method with the variable soft sphere (VSS) collision model is implemented to solve the Boltzmann equation and to acquire the heat flux between two parallel plates (Fourier Flow). The gaseous thermal conductivity of nitrogen is derived based on the Fourier's law under local equilibrium condition at temperature from 270 to 1800 K and pressure from 0.5 to 100,000 Pa and compared with the experimental data and Eucken relation from Chapman and Enskog (CE) theory. It is concluded that the present results are consistent with the experimental data but much higher than those by Eucken relation especially at high temperature. The contribution of internal energy of molecule to the gaseous thermal conductivity becomes significant as increasing the temperature.