A Microfluidic Device for Capture of Single Cells and Impedance Measurement

A microfluidic device for capture of single cells and impedance measurement is presented. The device consists of a PDMS channel with three micro pillars and a glass substrate with electrodes. The experiments demonstrated that the HeLa cell (human cervical epithelioid carcinoma) was successfully captured by the micro pillars and its impedance was measured by impedance spectroscopy. The range of operation voltage is from 0.1 V to 1.5 V and the scan frequency is from 1 kHz to 100 kHz. According to experimental results, the HeLa cell is capacitive and its electrical model can be simplified to the parallel connection with one resistor and one capacitor. This developed technique for cell impedance analysis possesses advantages of physical capture, low cost, and easy of fabrication and measurement.