Viruses like COVID-19 need faster detection and sampling than the rate at which they spread to ensure the country’s sustainable health recovery. Blood plasma has proven to be a crtitical and better clinical sample for the detection of various medical conditions as compared to whole blood. For in-situ and in-vivo health monitoring, plasma can be easily processed through Microfluidics Lab-On-Chip (LOC) Devices without clotting that shortens the turnaround time with minimum sample and reagents. The presented work discusses key properties of Blood Plasma, its suitability to Microfluidics LOC applications and the importance of Passive Plasma Separators as an embedded unit within any kind of LOC Device. The Passive LOC Plasma Separators offer rapid extraction without external forces in the form of miniaturized automated unit. The article compares various plasma separators on the basis of plasma extraction efficiency, fabrication techniques, and separation science utilised for haemolysis free extraction. Recent development in the area of membrane based [1]; sedimentation-assisted [2], gravitational assisted [3], self-driven [4], and recently emerging plasma separators are discussed in detail. The article also gives an insight into the possible future developments towards the faster and more economical fabrication of such disposable devices and their economic extension. To further support our vision, we fabricated some Fused Filament Fabricated (FFF) 3D Printed parts and reported the minimum average roughness of 1.466µm and the contact angle 76.5°. The factorial analysis for two factor ANOVA without replication give a variance of σ²=0.175, and FESEM analysis of surfaces also depicts optimum surface quality.

REFERENCES

1. Amasia and Madau, “Large-volume centrifugal microfluidic device for blood plasma separation”, Bioanalysis 2010, https://doi.org/10.4155/bio.10.140
2. Su, X.; Zhang, J.; Zhang, D.; Wang, Y.; Chen, M.; Weng, Z.; Wang, J.; Zeng, J.; Zhang, Y.; Zhang, S.; Ge, S.; Zhang, J.; Xia, N. High-Efficiency Plasma Separator Based on Immunocapture and Filtration. Micromachines 2020, 11, 352. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11040352
3. Sanghoon Park, Roxana Shabani, Mark Schumacher, Yoon Seoung Kim, Young Min Bae, Kyeong Hee Lee, Hyoung Jin Cho, “On chip whole blood plasma separator based on microfiltration, sedimentation and wetting contrast”, Microsyst Technol, 2015; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00542-015-2656-7
4. Wang, Y.; Nunna, B.B.; Talukder, N.; Etienne, E.E.; Lee, E.S. “Blood Plasma Self-Separation Technologies during the Self-Driven Flow in Microfluidic Platforms”, Bioengineering 2021, 8, 94. https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fbioengineering8070094