Design and Optimization of a Microfluidic Cell Separator Based on Dielectrophoresis

This paper presents the design and optimization of a dielectrophoresis-based cell separator by numerically analyzing the effects of geometrical dimensions on the separation performance and device safety in biological use. The separator uses negative DEP force to gather cells so that all cells have the same initial condition, and employs positive DEP to separate different cells. Simulation results show that the high electric field at the electrode edges could cause cell lysis. Therefore, we propose the maximum electric field as the criterion for measuring the safety of this device. We firstly obtain the optimal ratio of the electrode width to electrode interval by making a trade-off between separation efficiency and cell integrity. This result could be used as a general rule for designing DEP-based separators. The effects of channel height to separation efficiency are also discussed