Proposing a high-efficiency dielectrophoretic system for separation of dead and live cells

Recently, electrode-based Dielectrophoresis (eDEP) has been used for particle manipulation by means of triangular electrodes. In this theoretical and numerical study, a microchannel with quarter-of-ellipse electrodes is presented and a detailed comparison with triangular electrodes is made. Electric field, resultant DEP force, and particle trajectories for each microchannel are evaluated by means of COMSOL Multiphysics 4.4. Afterwards focusing and separation efficiencies of the systems are assessed and compared. Finally, our proposed model’s separation efficiency of live and dead cells is compared with our previous model published in the literature [1]. It is demonstrated that our proposed model have higher lateral DEP force, responsible for cell separation, compared to the previous triangular-electrode model. This feature is reflected in the 96% focusing efficiency for 10-micron particles and 100% separation efficiency for live and dead mammalian cells.