Advances in the miniaturization of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) [1] are revolutionizing the possibilities of sample analysis. For example, microfluidic devices enable the manipulation of tiny amounts of liquids, minimizing the consumption of samples and reagents and paving the way to portable Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) devices for point-of-care diagnosis [2]. Pretreatments such as separation and concentration of target analytes are an essential step before assays on biological or environmental samples [3], which usually consist of a mixture of components including particles of microscopic dimensions. Therefore, the development of efficient and reliable particle separation techniques is a major challenge in the progress of LOC technologies.
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