Electrophoresis in viscoelastic fluids: towards novel drug-delivery systems

Microfluidic systems find vast applications in the field of biochemical sciences. Current systems are limited to diluted (5-100X) biological samples whereas most unmodified biological samples are viscoelastic in nature. Transport of bio-colloids of various classes, in such viscoelastic fluids especially under the influence of dynamic electric and magnetic fields can have tremendous implications in Point-of-Care Diagnostics and Drug Delivery Systems. Lyotropic Liquid Crystals (LLCs) are being studied extensively for biomedical applications. Anisotropic viscosity in addition to non-linear elastic, viscous and inertial effects make LLCs a suitable candidate to study and characterize transport phenomena in biological fluids. For example: blood flow in vascular tumors. In this study, we characterize electrophoretic motion of charged particles of complex topologies in microfluidic flows within different channel geometries. The variation in flow-director coupling affects the electrophoretic motion of such particles as the shear stress gradient varies non-linearly.