MEMS impedance flow cytometry designs for effective manipulation of micro entities in health care applications

Abstract

Efficient manipulation of micro biological cells has always been a very important task in healthcare sector for which a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) based impedance flow cytometry has been proven to be a promising technique. This technique utilise the advantage of dielectrophoresis (DEP) force which is generated by non-uniform electric field in a microfluidic channel using an appropriate external AC supply at certain frequency range. The DEP forces generated in micro-channel depend upon various biological and physical parameters of cell and suspending medium. Apart from that design parameters of microfluidic channel and dimension of electrodes used for generating DEP action also plays major role in micro cell/bead manipulation. This article give remarks on the operating parameters which affects the cell manipulation and interrogates the currently accepted various electrode orientations in microfluidic MEMS flow cytometer technologies for effective manipulation of micro entities like healthy human cells (T-lymphocytes, B- lymphocytes, Monocytes, Leukocytes erythrocytes and human kidney cells HEK293), animal cells (neuroblastoma N115 and sheep red blood cells), cancer cells (MCF-7, MDA-435 and CD34+), yeast cells (saccharomyces cerevisiae, listeria innocua and E. coli) and micro particles (polystyrene beads) based on their dielectric properties using DEP action. Article focuses on the key electrode orientations for generation of non-uniform electric field in microfluidic flow cytometer like tapered electrodes, trapezoidal electrode arrays, Interdigitated electrodes, curved microelectrode and 3D electrode orientations and give remarks on their advantages and limitations. The cell manipulation with current MEMS impedance flow cytometry orientations targeting possibilities of implementation of the lab-on-chip devices has been discussed.