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The use of blood samples as liquid biopsy is a label-free method for cancer diagnosis that offers benefits over traditional invasive biopsy techniques. Cell sorting by acoustic waves offers a means to separate rare cells from blood samples based on their physical properties in a label-free, contactless and biocompatible manner. Herein, we describe a flow-through separation approach that provides an efficient separation of tumor cells (TCs) from white blood cells (WBCs) in a microfluidic device, "THINUS-Chip&" (Thin-Ultrasonic-Separator-Chip), actuated by ultrasounds. We introduce for the first time the concept of plate acoustic waves (PAW) applied to acoustophoresis as a new strategy. It lies in the geometrical chip design: different to other microseparators based on either bulk acoustic waves (BAW) or surface waves (SAW, SSAW and tSAW), it allows the use of polymeric materials without restrictions in the frequency of work. We demonstrate its ability to perform high-throughput isolation of TCs from WBCs, allowing a recovery rate of 84% ± 8% of TCs with a purity higher than 80% and combined viability of 85% at a flow rate of 80 βL/min (4.8 mL/h). The THINUS-Chip performs cell fractionation with low-cost manufacturing processes, opening the door to possible easy printing fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cobalt-catalyzed hydrolysis of sodium borohydride (NaBH4) has become an attractive process in view of the possibilities of using the hydride for hydrogen storage material and also for the production of amorphous and tunable-size magnetic nanoparticles. This process in which the metallic catalyst transforms into a Co- and B-based magnetic by-product when in contact with NaBH4has been modified in order to control the mechanism of formation, tune the final size and study the particular magnetic behavior of the Co–B alloy nanoparticles provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]