Novel Sperm Sorting Microfluidic Chip With Feedback Channel and Vertical Orientation

Abstract

Globally, couples suffering from infertility are increasing every year. Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have been performed to overcome infertility and it is important to sort healthy sperms to increase the success rate. In this paper, we propose a microfluidic sperm sorting chip (MSSC) with a feedback channel and vertical orientation. The feedback channel minimizes unintentional fluid flow due to evaporation that interferes with sperm sorting, and a vertically oriented sorting chip inspired by the female uterus improves sperm sorting efficiency by three times. As a result of the experiments with fabricated microfluidic chips, progressive motile sperm was sorted by the rate of 94%.