An IB-LBM study of continuous cell sorting in deterministic lateral displacement arrays

The deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is an important method used to sort particles and cells of different sizes. In this paper, the flexible cell sorting with the DLD method is studied by using a numerical model based on the immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM). In this model, the fluid motion is solved by the LBM, and the cell membrane–fluid interaction is modeled with the LBM. The proposed model is validated by simulating the rigid particle sorted with the DLD method, and the results are found in good agreement with those measured in experiments. We first study the effect of flexibility on a single cell and multiple cells continuously going through a DLD device. It is found that the cell flexibility can significantly affect the cell path, which means the flexibility could have significant effects on the continuous cell sorting by the DLD method. The sorting characteristics of white blood cells and red blood cells are further studied by varying the spatial distribution of cylinder arrays and the initial cell–cell distance. The numerical results indicate that a well concentrated cell sorting can be obtained under a proper arrangement of cylinder arrays and a large enough initial cell–cell distance.