Isolation and capture of rare cells for research has always been daunting when it comes to study of diseases like cancer. This is partly because of the heterogeneity of the cells and partly because of their rarity. In the recent years researchers have devised a variety of approaches. Based on the recent publications techniques like immunocapturing, inertial focusing in a microfluidic platform has shown a substantial promise. In this thesis, we introduce a combination of inertial focusing and passive micro-mixing through 3D chevron-type features in a microchannel to induce chaotic mixing within antibody-laced microchannels and, ultimately, promote rare cell capture. The device introduced in this work consists of curved channels with chevron grooves, coated with antibody laced microchannels. The curved channels enable inertial focusing while the chevron grooves enable chaotic mixing. Inertial focusing is meant to push the cells towards the walls while the chevron grooves are meant to increase the cell-wall interaction by chaotic mixing. Antibody laced hydrogel is meant to capture the relevant cells. The microfluidics platform is microfabricated through soft lithography, has a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) foundation and is thinly coated with an alginate hydrogel derivatized with streptavidin. We submit that our qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate the potentials in advancements in rare cell isolation through this integration of two techniques.
