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Effect of geometry on dielectrophoretic trap stiffness in microparticle trapping

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Abstract

Dielectrophoresis, an electrokinetic technique, can be used for contactless manipulation of micro- and nano-size particles suspended in a fluid. We present a 3-D microfluidic DEP device with an orthogonal electrode configuration that uses negative dielectrophoresis to trap spherical polystyrene micro-particles. Traps with three different basic geometric shapes, i.e. triangular, square, and circular, and a fixed trap area of around 900 μm2 were investigated to determine the effect of trap shape on dynamics and strength of particle trapping. Effects of trap geometry were quantitatively investigated by means of trap stiffness, with applied electric potentials from 6 VP-P to 10 VP-P at 1 MHz. Analyzing the trap stiffness with a trapped 4.42 μm spherical particle showed that the triangular trap is the strongest, while the square shape trap is the weakest. The trap stiffness grew more than eight times in triangular traps and six times in both square and circular traps when the potential of the applied electric field was increased from 6 VP-P to 10 VP-P at 1 MHz. With the maximum applied potential, i.e. 10 VP-P at 1 MHz, the stiffness of the triangular trap was 60% and 26% stronger than the square and circular trap, respectively. A finite element model of the microfluidic DEP device was developed to numerically compute the DEP force for these trap shapes. The findings from the numerical computation demonstrate good agreement with the experimental analysis. The analysis of three different trap shapes provides important insights to predict trapping location, strength of the trapping zone, and optimized geometry for high throughput particle trapping.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

The code developed and used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 53211, USA

    Mohammad Rizwen Ur Rahman & Woo-Jin Chang

  2. Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Tae Joon Kwak

  3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 53211, USA

    Jörg C. Woehl

  4. School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 53204, USA

    Woo-Jin Chang

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  1. Mohammad Rizwen Ur Rahman
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Rahman, M.R.U., Kwak, T.J., Woehl, J.C. et al. Effect of geometry on dielectrophoretic trap stiffness in microparticle trapping. Biomed Microdevices 23, 33 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-021-00570-3

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