Dielectrophoretic Trapping for Nanoparticles, High-Molecule-Weight DNA, and SYBR Gold Using Polyimide-Based Printed Circuit Board

Microelectrodes for electrokinetic detection have been employed to manipulate and collect nanomaterials and biomaterials. However, the process of microelectrode patterning has been researched in the semiconductor fabrication process, which is expensive and time-consuming. Here, we demonstrate dielectrophoretic trapping of 200 nm fluorescent polystyrene nanoparticles and $\lambda $ -deoxyribonucleic acid with SYBR gold using dielectrophoretic trapping onto an interdigitated circular electrode (ICE). For dielectrophoretic trapping, an ICE is designed and an ordered flexible printed circuit board (FPCB), possessing a non-porous polyimide substrate, is constructed. The ICE FPCB could identify the dielectrophoretic trapping conditions and simulate them by the finite element method. The fluorescent molecules in the ICE FPCB are dielectrophoretically trapped at the finger edges of the ICE when a peak-to-peak voltage of 12 V is applied at 6 kHz for 15–20 min. Moreover, monitoring of the dielectrophoretic trapping effect of SYBR gold eliminated the false negative detection error.