Simulation methodology for dielectrophoresis in microelectronic lab-on-a-chip

Recent trends in lab-on-a-chip show a growing use of dielectrophoresis (DEP) to manipulate biological objects such as cells and organic molecules [1], (2], [3], (4]. Bringing the advances of microelectronic miniaturization into biological and clinical analyses, combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening require new simulation tools. Dielectrophoretic simulators have been presented in the literature based on simplifying assumptions [5). This paper presents a simulation methodology able to determine DEP forces on particles of arbitrary complex geometries and size, permitting accurate modeling of their position, overcoming the limitations of previous simulators. Simulation results are obtained using a 2D version of the simulator based on the developed 3D theory