Analysis and Simulation of a Planar Microelectrode Structure for Dielectrophoretic Manipulation of a Single Cell and Cell Cluster

Abstract:

In this paper, we proposed a four-electrode microdevice for precise isolating and trapping of a single cell using negative dielectrophoresis (nDEP) forces. To generate appropriate nDEP forces, sinusoidal alternating currents (AC) signals with various phase shifting were applied to the microelectrodes, and the finite element analysis (FEA) techniques were used to analyze the resulted electric field distribution. The simulation results implied that effective trapping and rotation forces can be realized by the proposed device structure under specific excitation condition. The geometry effect on the electric field distributions of electrodes was further studied in details. For the electrodes with 50 μm width, the maximum value of the gradient of the squared field strength could reach 10⁶ V²/m³, which is higher than that for electrodes with 20 μm width. The influences of applied voltage to electric field gradient were also simulated and the result shows that the dielectrophoresis (DEP) force increased significantly with the magnitude of applied voltage. These preliminary results may provide useful insight and design guidelines for the future DEP microstructure design and fabrication.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volumes 645-646)
• Pages: 1285-1289
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.645-646.1285
• Online since: May 2015
• Authors: Ping Chen, Xue Liang Ma, Hua Zhang, Mei Jie Han, Yong Cun Wang, Bin Bin Li, Hai Xin Zhu*
• Keywords: Cancer Diagnosis, Dielectrophoresis, Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Single Cell Manipulation

References

[1] J. Hultström, O. Manneberg, K. Dopf, H.M. Hertz, H. Brismar, M. Wiklund, Proliferation and viability of adherent cells manipulated by standing-wave ultrasound in a microfluidic chip, Ultrasound med. bio., 33 (2007) 145-151.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2006.07.024

[2] J.J. Hawkes, R.W. Barber, D.R. Emerson, W.T. Coakley, Continuous cell washing and mixing driven by an ultrasound standing wave within a microfluidic channel, Lab Chip, 4 (2004) 446-452.

DOI: 10.1039/b408045a

[3] A. Ashkin, J. Dziedzic, T. Yamane, Optical trapping and manipulation of single cells using infrared laser beams, Nature, 330 (1987) 769-771.

DOI: 10.1038/330769a0

[4] S.M. Block, D.F. Blair, H.C. Berg, Compliance of bacterial flagella measured with optical tweezers, Nature, 338 (1989) 514-518.

DOI: 10.1038/338514a0

[5] J. Dobson, Remote control of cellular behaviour with magnetic nanoparticles, Nature nanotech., 3 (2008) 139-143.

DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2008.39

[6] P.C. Li, D.J. Harrison, Transport, manipulation, and reaction of biological cells on-chip using electrokinetic effects, Anal. chem., 69 (1997) 1564-1568.

DOI: 10.1021/ac9606564

[7] J. Voldman, Electrical forces for microscale cell manipulation, Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng., 8 (2006) 425-454.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev.bioeng.8.061505.095739

[8] N. Mittal, A. Rosenthal, J. Voldman, nDEP microwells for single-cell patterning in physiological media, Lab Chip, 7 (2007) 1146-1153.

DOI: 10.1039/b706342c

[9] M. Şen, K. Ino, J. Ramón-Azcón, H. Shiku, T. Matsue, Cell pairing using a dielectrophoresis-based device with interdigitated array electrodes, Lab Chip, 13 (2013) 3650-3652.

DOI: 10.1039/c3lc50561h

[10] L. C. Hsiung, C.H. Yang, C.L. Chiu, C.L. Chen, Y. Wang, H. Lee, J.Y. Cheng, M.C. Ho, A.M. Wo, A planar interdigitated ring electrode array via dielectrophoresis for uniform patterning of cells, Biosens. Bioelectron., 24 (2008) 869-875.

DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2008.07.027

[11] C. Huang, C. Liu, J. Loo, T. Stakenborg, L. Lagae, Single cell viability observation in cell dielectrophoretic trapping on a microchip, Appl. Phys. Lett., 104 (2014) 013703.

DOI: 10.1063/1.4861135

[12] M. Talary, K. Mills, T. Hoy, A. Burnett, R. Pethig, Dielectrophoretic separation and enrichment of CD34+ cell subpopulation from bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells, Med. Biol. Eng. Comput., 33 (1995) 235-237.

DOI: 10.1007/bf02523050

[13] Y. Huang, S. Joo, M. Duhon, M. Heller, B. Wallace, X. Xu, Dielectrophoretic cell separation and gene expression profiling on microelectronic chip arrays, Anal. Chem., 74 (2002) 3362-3371.

DOI: 10.1021/ac011273v

[14] J. Vykoukal, D.M. Vykoukal, S. Freyberg, E.U. Alt, P.R. Gascoyne, Enrichment of putative stem cells from adipose tissue using dielectrophoretic field-flow fractionation, Lab Chip, 8 (2008) 1386-1393.

DOI: 10.1039/b717043b

[15] M. Alshareef, N. Metrakos, E.J. Perez, F. Azer, F. Yang, X. Yang, G. Wang, Separation of tumor cells with dielectrophoresis-based microfluidic chip, Biomicrofluidics, 7 (2013) 011803.

DOI: 10.1063/1.4774312

[16] H.A. Pohl, The motion and precipitation of suspensoids in divergent electric fields, J. Appl. Phy., 22 (1951) 869-871.

DOI: 10.1063/1.1700065