Floating-Electrode-Based Microchip Enabling Multimodal Manipulation and Physical Parameters Measurement of Cells/Particles

Abstract

Cell/particle manipulation has made significant strides in fields such as biomedical research, chemical analysis, and materials science, emerging as a crucial discipline. This article introduces an innovative microchip featuring a wavy floating electrode structure, capable of multimode cell/particle manipulation. The floating-electrode-based microchip enabling different modal manipulation of cells/particles can be realized by simply adjusting the voltage and frequency parameters of the driving signal. Vortices can be generated at the edges of floating electrode in the low-frequency range of the driving signal, orbital revolution of popular cells and out-of-plane rotation of single cells can be achieved by adjusting the voltage amplitude. The orbital revolution can be used for the enrichment of cells/particles, while the out-of-plane rotation provides the possibility to reconstruct the 3-D model of single cells and measure the physical parameters (ellipticity, surface area, and volume). As the frequency increases, the dielectrophoretic forces gradually become dominant, enabling the effective separation of cells/particles with different electrical properties. The separation feasibility of the microchip was verified by the effective separation of particles and yeast cells. Through numerical simulation and experiments, the microchip is proved to have the advantages of simple structure, convenient operation, and multimodal manipulation of cells/particles.