title: Screen-printed microfluidic dielectrophoresis chip for cell separation.
abstract: Dielectrophoresis (DEP), the induced motion of polarizable particles in a non-uniform electric field, has been proven as a perfect candidate to transport, accumulate, separate and characterize micro-/nano-scale bioparticles in microfluidic systems. However, conventional fabrication technologies are complex, time-consuming and relatively expensive, leading to low throughput of the DEP-based systems. In this paper, we report a novel microfluidic alternating current DEP (AC-DEP) chip fabricated via inexpensive screen printing method. The innovation of our work consists in the extreme simplicity of the fabrication procedure, i.e., the main components, including electrodes and channels, were constructed by layer-by-layer screen printing process, which is especially suitable for high-throughput mass production. Carbon paste, instead of metals, was used to print interdigitated electrodes with semi-3D structure which not only reduces dramatically the chip cost but also increases particle trapping efficiency. To test the chip performance, yeast cells, as model cells, were trapped and separated from a mixed suspension with PS microspheres. Our results show that high capture rate and separation efficiency can be achieved under optimized conditions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China; School of Biological Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
authors.forename: Hongwu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoguang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China. Electronic address: donghua@scut.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
authors.forename: Jianhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry; D002469:Cell Separation / Q000379:methods*; D004566:Electrodes; D004586:Electrophoresis / Q000379:methods*; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry; D011327:Printing
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon
keywords: Cell separation; Dielectrophoresis; Microfluidics chip; Screen-printing