Improved dielectrophoretic particle actuators for microfluidics

In this paper we present improved dielectrophoretic particle actuators for application in microfluidics. Based on the parabolic velocity profile of pressure driven flows an improved curved shape for the electrodes is derived. This maximizes the time a particle is exposed to the actuator improving the performance. Next the force generated by the actuators is improved with the introduction of new plane-electrodes in stead of the classical line-electrodes. Finally, by making the design symmetrical with respect to the middle of the channel the required particle displacement is reduced by 50%, which increases the performance even more. Modeling of a particle sorter and a particle accumulator by calculating 3D particle trajectories shows that with these optimizations the performance increases up to 300% over the classical straight line-electrodes.