Trapping particles in microfluidics by positive dielectrophoresis

Experiments were performed on dilute suspensions of polarized particles in microfluidics with electrodes of different sizes arranged parallel and perpendicular to the flow. Using experiments and simulations, we considered the kinetics of the heterogeneous aggregation of positively polarized particles flowing through a dielectrophoretic micro-device. We identified the conditions under which the interparticle electric interactions do not affect the particle trapping in the high-field strength regions and demonstrated that, under these conditions, the predictions of a single-particle model for the particle accumulation on the electrodes are in a reasonable quantitative agreement with experimental data.