Biological cell separation using dielectrophoresis

Basic IC fabrication techniques are employed in this paper with the purpose of designing a microfluidic device with a 3D electrode arrangement to separate live and dead biological cells. This is done using the concept of dielectrophoresis, which describes the transnational motion of particles due to the application of a non-uniform electrical field. The simulations where carried out using the protoplast model for mammalian spherical cells [4] in a wide range of electric field frequencies. Analytically, we have found that the Clausius-Mossoti Factor is negligible for live mammalian cells over a frequency range of 50 – 70 KHz whereas is maximum for the dead cells. Since the Clausius-Mossoti factor is the important term in the dielectrophoretic force formulae, we can envision our microfluidic design as a feasible tool to separate live and dead mammalian cells.