Dielectrophoresis based cell switching in continuous flow microfluidic devices

This article presents a novel negative-dielectrophoresis based approach for switching of a focused stream of micro-sized particles, including cells, to desired locations inside a continuous flow microfluidic device. The first section, of the device, focuses the incoming stream of micro-sized particles while the second section switches this focused stream of micro-sized particles. The microfluidic device consists of a glass substrate and a PDMS layer. The microfluidic device is realized using standard microfabrication. Tests are carried out using blood cells to demonstrate the efficacy of the approach in switching a stream of micro-sized particles to multiple locations inside the microchannel.