A MEMS Coulter counter for cell monitoring and detection

A novel MEMS Coulter counter for cell monitoring and detection is designed, fabricated and tested in this paper. Microfabrication is employed to form a multilayered sandwich structure consisting of an SU-8 microchannel on a glass substrate covered by a PDMS lid. The microchannel is further divided into a passive mixing region, a focusing region using negative dielectrophoretic forces and a measuring region by multiple thick electroplated electrode pairs. The MEMS Coulter counter is used for detection and monitoring the impedance changes of cells as a function of time after mixing with different experimental extracellular environments. This paper presents the modeling of our design and testing results with fabricated devices.