REVIEW ARTICLE


Particle Focusing and Separation through Lab-On-Chip Device by Dielectrophoresis



Deli Liu*, 1, Baoyu Song1, Liguo Chen1, 2, Lining Sun1, 2
1 State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China
2 Robotics and Microsystems Center, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215021, China


© 2010 Liu et al

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215021, China; Tel: +86-13771766879; E-mail: drliudeli@gmail.com


Abstract

A Lab-On-Chip micro-device has been introduced for the focusing and separation of particles which exploits negative dielectrophoretic (nDEP) force. A 3D numerical computational model was presented to simulate the focusing and separation process. In particular, the model will solve for bioparticle movement and Joule heating. In the experimental study, the mixture of viable and nonviable yeast cells was used to demonstrate the focusing and separation effect of the designed microfluidic device. The fabricated chip performs a desired focusing result for the conditions with the electric fields frequency of 1MHz, the medium conductivity of 0.01S/m and the applied voltage V = 20Vpp. The mixture of viable and nonviable yeast cells were focused to the central plane of the micro-channel and then separated by non-equilibrium nDEP induced by the single part of the last pair of electrodes with conductivity σ = 0.01S/m, applied voltage V = 20Vppand applied electric field frequency of 5Mhz, which validities the prediction of the proposed 3D model. This Lab-On-Chip device provides a simple and effective mean of particle focusing.

Keywords: Lab-On-Chip, dielectrophoresis, particle focusing, particle separation.