Study on the assembly and separation of biological cell by optically induced dielectrophoretic technology

Optically induced dielectrophoretic (ODEP) chip is to combine their own advantages of optical tweezers and electrodynamics manipulation technologies, which can trap single particles in high resolution as well as enrich much of micro-/nanoparticles in high throughput. The paper analyzed the structure of optoelectronic tweezers (OET) chip, moreover, the frequency response of multi-membrane eukaryotic cells about 103–109 Hz. The Clausius–Mositti (CM) frequency factor in terms of cell membrane, cell cytoplasm, nuclear envelope thickness changes, and volume ratio was illustrated. In the end, the paper presented 3D numeric model of cells in OET chip. The dielectrophoresis force acting on the dipole of 11.8-μm cells subjected to a non-uniform electric field under 60-μm Gaussian-distributed beam spot could be simulated in the enrichment process. The separation of cells that were two different types of CM values was calculated. Furthermore, it was proved to be feasible to achieve the efficient separation of cells using ODEP technology in the biological numerical model. Comparing with the literature of experiment, the results in cell dielectric spectroscopy and numeric model findings were in general agreement. The simplified structure and numeric model of nucleated cell provide a theoretical basis for research of biosensor and complex life.