Ciliated micropillars for the microfluidic-based isolation of nanoscale lipid vesicles

We fabricated a microfluidic device consisting of ciliated micropillars, forming a porous silicon nanowire-on-micropillar structure. We demonstrated that the prototype device can preferentially trap exosome-like lipid vesicles, while simultaneously filtering out proteins and cell debris. Trapped lipid vesicles can be recovered intact by dissolving the porous nanowires in PBS buffer.