A Low-Cost Dielectrophoretic Chip with 3D Overlapping Electrodes for Cell Trapping Applications

Cell trapping is the elementary operation for single cell analysis. In order to develop an automatic cell analysis system, we designed a low-cost dielectrophoretic (DEP)chip with 3D overlapping electrodes for cell trapping and manipulating. Preliminary experimental results of the fabricated DEP chip and some simulation results are presented in this paper. Upper and lower electrode patterns with minimum features of 5 μm were etched from ordinary 4 inch single-sided ITO substrates. SU8 wall structures with thickness of 80 μm were deposited to ensure constrained flow within the cavity. Following a simple assembly and straightforward setup, it was confirmed that the microbeads can be captured in the region where the upper and lower electrodes overlap as viewed from above. An alternative approach, such as through glass via (TGV)that involves a complicated fabrication process, is therefore not needed. The current approach largely reduce the cost of this cell-capturing chip based on the DEP effect.