Abstract
Microfluidic techniques for cell manipulation have been constantly developed and integrated into small chips for high-performance bioassays. However, the drawbacks of each of the techniques often hindered their further advancement and their wide use in biotechnology. To overcome this difficulty, an examination and understanding of various aspects of the developed manipulation techniques are required. In this review, we provide the details of primary microfluidic techniques that have received much attention for bioassays. First, we introduce the manipulation techniques using a sole driving source, i.e., dielectrophoresis, electrophoresis, optical tweezers, magnetophoresis, and acoustophoresis. Next, we present rapid electrokinetic patterning, a hybrid opto-electric manipulation technique developed recently. It is introduced in detail along with the underlying physical principle, operating environment, and current challenges. This paper will offer readers the opportunity to improve existing manipulation techniques, suggest new manipulation techniques, and find new applications in biotechnology.
Highlights
Microfluidics is the science and technology of manipulating and processing colloidal systems including fluids and particles at the micro- or nano-scale [1]
Among the various mechanisms to manipulate particles using electrically induced forces, dielectrophoresis (DEP) is the most frequently utilized in microfluidic systems [29,40,48,51,65,66,67,68,69,70]
Magnetophoresis is the motion of a magnetic particle relative to a stationary fluid, driven by a non-uniform magnetic field (Figure 4) [35,36,37,38]
Summary
Microfluidics is the science and technology of manipulating and processing colloidal systems including fluids and particles at the micro- or nano-scale [1]. The technique can manipulate a large quantity of micro- and nano-sized particles at once at an arbitrary location in a microfluidic chip through electrokinetic and optical effects of each of the two driving sources and the electrothermal effect caused by the interaction of the two [26,58,64]. This capability has been demonstrated in various experiments. This review will offer readers the opportunity to improve the existing manipulation techniques and help them find new applications for the techniques in biotechnology
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