Characterization of Dielectrophoretic Force for the Structural Shapes of Window in Microfluidic Dielectrophoretic Chip

Dielectrophoresis(DEP) is useful in manipulation and separation of micro-sized particles including biological samples such as bacteria, blood cells, and cancer cells in a micro-fluidic device. Especially, those separation and manipulation techniques using DEP in combination of micro fabrication technique have been researched more and more. Recently, it is revealed that a window structure of insulating layer in microfluidic DEP chip is key role in trap of micro-particles around the window structure. However, the trap phenomenon-driven by DEP force gradient did not fully understand and is still illusive. In this study, we characterize the trap mechanism and efficiency with different shapes of window in a microfluidic DEP chip. To do this characterization, we fabricated 4 different windows shapes such as rhombus, circle, squares, and hexagon inside a micro-fluidic chip, and performed micro-sized particles manipulation experiments as varying the frequency and voltage of AC signal. Moreover, the numerical simulation with the same parameters that were used in the experiment was also performed in order to compare the simulation results and the experimental results. Those comparison shows that both results are closely matched. This study may be helpful in design and development of microfluidic DEP chip for trapping micro-scaled biological particle.

미세유체칩내 electrode의 opening window형태에 따른 유전전기영동력 특성 규명