Microfluidic chip for rapid electrofusion of homogeneous and heterogeneous cells

We present a cell electrofusion chip fabricated using soft lithography technique, which combines the rapid and precise cell pairing microstructures with high yield electrofusion micro-electrodes to improve the cell fusion. The design uses hydrodynamic trapping combined with positive dielectrophoresis (pDEP) to achieve cell fusion. The chip consists of total 960 pairs of trapping sites, which are capable of pairing and fusing both homogeneous and heterogeneous types of cells. The fused cells can be easily taken out of the chip that makes this device distinguishable from other designs. We observe pairing efficiency of 68% with fusion efficiency of 64%.