A DEP-assisted single-cell electroporation chip with low operation voltage

This paper reports an insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP)-assisted single-cell electroporation chip that can locally electroporate cells with an operation voltage of 1V. The electroporation chip consists of two metal electrodes and a sandwiched dielectric polymer layer with microwells. The dielectric microwell arrays create non-uniform electric fields to generate positive DEP forces to capture a single-cell at each microwell. The following DC pulse voltage imposes a large electric field across the membranes of the captured cells and electroporates the cells. Human lymphoma cells in an 8 × 11 array are successfully electroporated.