ZEBRAFISH SPERM ACTIVATION THROUGH AN ARTIFICIAL CILIA EMBEDDED SERPENTINE MICROFLUIDIC PLATFORM

This work reports an artificial cilia embedded serpentine microfluidic channel for high throughput zebrafish sperm cell activation. With this proposed device, an average of 74.44 6.07 % of the used zebrafish sperm cells was activated within the first 15 seconds of the experiment, which is at least 20 % superior to the currently other available techniques. The p.PIV analysis of the flow zone suggests that the curvilinear microchannel initiates an orbital rotation to the flow field whereas artificial cilia motion establishes a local rotation in the center of the flow field. Collectively, both the rotational motion, harness a uniform fluxing within the microchannel which is quintessential towards changing the temporal dynamics of the sperm cells, hence promoting the sperm cell activation.