Table 1.

Performance summary of EV isolation techniques

Technique	Separation property	Throughput (μL/min)	Recovery	Purity	Sample type
Ultracentrifugation	Size, density	–	Med	Low	–
Precipitation	Size, surface markers	–	High	Low	Plasma and serum [7], urine [8]
SEC	Size	–	Med	Med	–
Mechanical filtering	Size	25–1000	Low–high	Med–high	Urine [18, 19], cell culture medium [17, 21], plasma and lung broncholalveolar lavage [17]
Functionalised surfaces	Surface marker	0.05–14	Med	High	Cell culture medium [10, 24], urine [22], serum [11, 12, 23], plasma [10, 14, 25]
Hydrodynamic focusing	Size	4.5–23	Med	Med	Plasma [28], cell culture medium [26, 27]
DLD	Size	< 15	Med	Low	Purified urine exosomes [30], serum [31], urine [31]
Viscoelastic separation	Size	3	Med	Low	Purified cell culture media EVs [34, 36]
Acoustophoresis	Size, density, compressibility	0.1–500	Low–high	Med	Whole blood [47], plasma [38–41], urine [39, 42, 43], cell culture medium [38, 39, 45, 46]
Magnetophoresis	Surface marker	0.8–3	Med–high	High	Whole blood [50], plasma [48], serum [13], cell culture medium [59], urine [59]
Dielectrophoresis	Size, charge	3	Med–high	Med	Purified EVs [57, 58]