Particle separation based on dielectrophoresis force using boundary element method and point-particle approach in a microfluidic channel

Active sorting of particle in the dielectrophoresis microfluidic channel by applying the boundary element method and point-particle approach is investigated. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of particle sorting for various particle sizes, electrode potential, electrode spacing, and relative permittivity. The microfluidic device consists a straight mother channel, two inlets, two outlets, and up and down triangular electrodes. The boundary element method is applied to numerically solve the integral equations of the Laplace differential equation of electric potential and Stokes differential equation. In continue, the dynamics of particle separation using the point-particle approach is investigated. Numerical results indicate that there are three different particle sorting regimes. They are called by up-outlet, down-outlet, and trapped regimes. The results illustrate that there are a good agreement between two numerical approaches.