Abstract
Dielectrophoretic force is an electric force experienced by particles subjected to non-uniform electric fields. In recent years, plenty of dielectrophoretic force (DEP) applications have been developed. Most of these works have been centered on particle positioning and manipulation. DEP particle characterization has been left in the background. Likewise, these characterizations have studied the electric properties of particles from a qualitative point of view. This article focuses on the quantitative measurement of cells’ dielectric force, specifically yeast cells. The measures are obtained as the results of a theoretical model and an instrumental method, both of which are developed and described in the present article, based on a dielectrophoretic chamber made of two V-shaped placed electrodes. In this study, 845 cells were measured. For each one, six speeds were taken at different points in its trajectory. Furthermore, the chamber design is repeatable, and this was the first time that measurements of dielectrophoretic force and cell velocity for double yeast cells were accomplished. To validate the results obtained in the present research, the results have been compared with the dielectric properties of yeast cells collected in the pre-existing literature.
Highlights
Despite the huge increase of dielectrophoretic force (DEP) related technologies, developed in the last twenty years [1], there is still a great deal of applications to be studied
One of the points whereby DEP is being considered a potential tool for chemical and biochemical analysis is its usefulness for micromanipulation [2,3,4,5,6,7]
The statistical analysis confirmed the theoretical model about the symmetry axis of the electric field, and showed that the used method is suitable and accurate for the dynamic measurement of the dielectrophoretic force in single and coupled cells
Summary
Despite the huge increase of dielectrophoretic force (DEP) related technologies, developed in the last twenty years [1], there is still a great deal of applications to be studied. During this time, several revolutions have taken place regarding the use of DEP and dielectrophoretic devices. DEP employment, as one of the bases of "label-free" techniques, is especially useful [14,24,25,26,27] Another important line of research on dielectrophoresis is to attempt to integrate on the same device the microfluidic channels for cell manipulation and all the laboratory functions (hardware and software). This is the so-called lab-on-chip [18,24,28,29,30,31]
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