Microfluidic Devices for Continuous Separation

Dear Colleagues,

In the past decade, great progress has been realized in different research areas where flow devices already play or are expected to play a key and enabling role in the future.

We have witnessed the well-recognized and imminent need for sustainable, green, and energy-efficient processes, where the integration of an in situ separation is often the most critical step to be taken. Macro-scale continuous separation approaches do not allow for the needed in situ and instantaneous separations, whereas miniaturized approaches have already shown to be promising or even effective to reach this target.

In a more general sense, pharmaceutical, chemical, and diagnostic industries have expressed a need to develop continuous separation devices that can cope with their preparative or production scale levels. To advance many recent developments, high-resolution separation of bioparticles (e.g., extracellular vesicles or amyloids) in their native form would be highly desirable. Using features that can only be effectively exploited in a microfluidic setting (flow focusing, acoustic resonance, inertial effects, etc.), several novel separation methodologies have been introduced during the past decade. The moment has now come to further develop and broadly implement these microfluidic features for a wide range of industrial and academic applications.

You are cordially invited to contribute to this Special Issue of Separations, dedicated to ‘Microfluidic devices for Continuous Separation’, with original research articles and reviews.

With this Special Issue, the latest developments on continuous separations will be reported. We are convinced that by collecting your latest developments in a Special Issue focusing on this exciting research area, a high impact and broad visibility in the research community will be reached.

Prof. Dr. Wim De Malsche
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Separations is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Continuous separation
• Microfluidic separation
• Integrated separation