Theoretical and Experimental Approach On Simultaneous and Continuous Separation and Concentration of Particles On An iDEP Platform

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is an electrokinetic technique successfully employed for the manipulation of particles in microfluidic decives. DEP is defined as the movement of dielectric particles due to an induced polarization in the presence of non-uniform electric fields. In this work, non-uniform electric fields are achieved employing insulating structures between a set of electrodes. This approach is known as insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP). In the present work, performance of a simultaneous and continuous separator and concentrator of a mixture of particles is studied theoretically and experimentally. A two-particles mixture of polystyrene beads with different sizes are employed to evaluate the performance of the separator and concentrator on a DC-iDEP platform device. A computational model was developed in order to predict particles pathlines and estimate trapping regions where particles are concentrated. Theoretical and experimental results are compared in the present study.