RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Shear rheology of methyl cellulose based solutions for cell mechanical measurements at high shear rates
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.11.18.517048
DO 10.1101/2022.11.18.517048
A1 Büyükurgancı, Beyza
A1 Basu, Santanu Kumar
A1 Neuner, Markus
A1 Guck, Jochen
A1 Wierschem, Andreas
A1 Reichel, Felix
YR 2023
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/02/06/2022.11.18.517048.abstract
AB Methyl cellulose (MC) is a widely used material in various microfluidic applications in biology. Due to its biocompatibility, it has become a popular crowding agent for microfluidic cell deformability measurements, which usually operate at high shear rates (> 10,000 s−1). However, a full rheological characterization of methyl cellulose solutions under these conditions has not yet been reported. With this study, we provide a full shear-rheological description for solutions of up to 1% MC dissolved in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) that are commonly used in real-time deformability cytometry (RT-DC). We characterized three different MC-PBS solutions used for cell mechanical measurements in RT-DC with three different shear rheometer setups to cover a range of shear rates from 0.1 - 150,000 s−1. We report viscosities and normal stress differences in this regime. Viscosity functions can be well described using a Carreau-Yasuda model. Furthermore, we present the temperature dependency of shear viscosity and first normal stress difference of these solutions. Our results show that methyl cellulose solutions behave like power-law liquids in viscosity and first normal stress difference at shear rates between 5,000 - 150,000 s−1. We construct a general viscosity equation for each MC solution at a certain shear rate and temperature. Furthermore, we investigated how MC concentration influences the rheology of the solutions and found the entanglement concentration at around 0.64 w/w%. Our results help to better understand the viscoelastic behavior of MC solutions, which can now be considered when modelling stresses in microfluidic channels.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.