Blood cell tracing in a microchannel by using dielectrophoresis force

Abstract

The conventional techniques of platelet separation are by using a centrifugation and acoustic. However, by using these techniques, the platelets become active due to the relatively high-speed centrifugal force and large amount of a sample usage. Therefore, to overcome this problem, an electric separation technique is preferred as it relies more on the dielectric properties of particles, that allow for highly selective and sensitive analysis. One of them is dielectrophoresis (DEP), which is the force resulting from an interaction between bipolar particles in a non-uniform electric field that can be used to separate neutral particles. The DEP force allows the separation of platelets from red blood cells due to dielectric properties of the particles and medium as it requires small quantities of samples, lower reagents usage, and low-cost equipment. In this study, H-type microchannel with two inlets and outlets was developed by using COMSOL© software to observe the cell distribution at blood concentrations; CA=0.01, 0.015, 0.02, 0.025 and 0.03 mol/m3, with feed velocities at the inlet B; vB=600, 700, 800, 900 and 1000 μm/s and at voltages charged; V=-30V to 30V that applied at the five electrodes. The simulation results show the optimization of blood cell concentration and velocity were achieved at the outlets at CA=0.01 mol/m3 and vB=800 μm/s, respectively. Moreover, the optimum voltage for platelet cell separation was at V=10V as it shows the highest DEP force; FDEP=-3.19×1013 N/m as compared to the other tested voltages.