Analysis of electrode shape effect on single HeLa cell impedance using COMSOL simulation

In disease prophylaxis, single cell inspection provides more in-depth information than that made available from conventional examinations. At the single cell level, the electrical properties of the cell are helpful in understanding the effects of the cellular behavior. The electric field distribution affects the results of single cell impedance measurement and the electrode geometry affects the electric field distributions. Therefore, this study performs numerical solutions from the FEM simulation of the COMSOL multiphysics package to analyze the effects of electrode geometry on microfluidic devices. An equivalent circuit model, incorporating the PBS solution, a pair of electrodes and cell, is used to obtain the impedance of single HeLa cell. According to the simulation results, the circle electrodes can provide higher electric filed strength than general electrodes in the same operation voltage. Additionally, increasing the operation voltage reduce the magnitude of single HeLa cell impedance at two kinds of electrode shapes. From circle electrode simulation results, the magnitude of single HeLa impedance decrease from 2.3×10⁶ to 1.1×10⁵ between 0.1 and 1 V at a frequency of 100 kHz.