Mehrdimensionale Feinstpartikelfraktionierung

Particle systems are used in many industrial products, process engineering processes up to food chemistry and pharmacology. Due to the scalability of different forces on particles, microfluidic systems are suitable for fractionating a particle suspension according to various criteria. Methods for the fractionation of technical fine particles in microfluidic systems can be divided into active and passive methods. Passive methods are very robust and mostly use the laminar flow conditions in micro channels. Active methods use superimposed electric, magnetic or acoustic fields. In addition, size-independent separation characteristics based on the electrical, magnetic or mechanical properties of the particles can be addressed and the method can be adapted to the respective particle class. In order to build up a flexible and controllable system for particle fractionation, a combination of a passive and an active method is required. For this reason, the research project aims at the development of a fractionation system that allows the fractionation of particles by size, acoustic contrast and shape using surface acoustic waves. For the characterization of the flow, particle distribution and selectivity of the fractionation, an additional measurement technique based on astigmatic particle tracking velocimetry in combination with deep learning neural networks will be investigated and developed.