Mitigating positional dependence in coplanar electrode Coulter-type microfluidic devices

•Particle sizing accuracy of microfluidic Coulter-type devices with coplanar layout is limited by variability in particle path.•We present a method that significantly improves particle sizing accuracy without the need for particle focusing.•The method exploits the richness of the information contained in the measured traces, by means of simple signal-processing.

Microfluidic impedance-based devices with coplanar electrode layout represent an attractive tool for low-cost, label-free, single-cell analysis. However, their usefulness has long been limited by the positional dependence of the measured signals, i.e., identical particles traveling along different paths provide different traces. In this paper we show that it is possible to significantly reduce this unwanted effect via straightforward signal processing, by exploiting the richness of the information contained in the recorded traces.

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