Comparative study of PID control and model predictive control for a microfluidic electroporation system

This paper describes a comparative study of two feedback control methods for a microfluidic electroporation (EP) system. The regulation of the transmembrane voltage (V_m) and nano-electropore radius (r) of HeLa cells on a micro EP chip was achieved using a linear Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) Controller and also Model Predictive Controller (MPC) based on the critical electric field for single-cell EP. Numerical simulations of static and dynamic responses of the two critical states, V_m and r, shows that feedback control can improve the cell viability and EP efficiency compared to open-loop (OL) system. The benefits and limitations of these two control methods for EP and possible future works have also been discussed.