Confinement effect on the microcapillary flow and shape of red blood cells.

Blood flow; Cell flow; Confinement effects; Confinement ratio; Diagnostic biomarkers; Flow behaviours; Lab-on-a-chip devices; Micro capillary flow; Micro-vasculature; Red blood cell; Biomedical Engineering; Materials Science (all); Condensed Matter Physics; Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes; Colloid and Surface Chemistry

Abstract :

[en] The ability to change shape is essential for the proper functioning of red blood cells (RBCs) within the microvasculature. The shape of RBCs significantly influences blood flow and has been employed in microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices, serving as a diagnostic biomarker for specific pathologies and enabling the assessment of RBC deformability. While external flow conditions, such as the vessel size and the flow velocity, are known to impact microscale RBC flow, our comprehensive understanding of how their shape-adapting ability is influenced by channel confinement in biomedical applications remains incomplete. This study explores the impact of various rectangular and square channels, each with different confinement and aspect ratios, on the in vitro RBC flow behavior and characteristic shapes. We demonstrate that rectangular microchannels, with a height similar to the RBC diameter in combination with a confinement ratio exceeding 0.9, are required to generate distinctive well-defined croissant and slipper-like RBC shapes. These shapes are characterized by their equilibrium positions in the channel cross section, and we observe a strong elongation of both stable shapes in response to the shear rate across the different channels. Less confined channel configurations lead to the emergence of unstable other shape types that display rich shape dynamics. Our work establishes an experimental framework to understand the influence of channel size on the single-cell flow behavior of RBCs, providing valuable insights for the design of biomicrofluidic single-cell analysis applications.

Disciplines :

Physics

Author, co-author :

Nouaman, Mohammed ; Dynamics of Fluids, Department of Experimental Physics, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

Darras, Alexis ; Dynamics of Fluids, Department of Experimental Physics, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

WAGNER, Christian ; University of Luxembourg ; Dynamics of Fluids, Department of Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

Recktenwald, Steffen M ; Dynamics of Fluids, Department of Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany ; Micro/Bio/Nanofluidics Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa, Japan

External co-authors :

yes

Language :

English

Title :

Confinement effect on the microcapillary flow and shape of red blood cells.

Publication date :

March 2024

Journal title :

Biomicrofluidics

ISSN :

1932-1058

Publisher :

American Institute of Physics, United States

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

024104

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/bmf/article-pdf/doi/10.1063/5.0197208/19862236/024104_1_5.0197208.pdf

Funders :

Universität des Saarlandes
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Deutsch-Französische Hochschule

Funding text :

This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) Project No. 349558021 (WA 1336/13-1 and RE 5025/1-2). M.N. acknowledges support and funding from the \u201CDeutsch-Franz\u00F6sische-Hochschule\u201D (DFH) DFDK CDFA-01-14 \u201CLiving fluids.\u201D A.D. acknowledges funding from the Young Investigator Grant of Saarland University.

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