Abstract

FERNANDEZ MORALES, Flavio Humberto; DUARTE, Julio Enrique  and  SAMITIER MARTI, Josep. Aggregation of latex microparticles: simulation and experimental verification. Rev.fac.ing.univ. Antioquia [online]. 2009, n.47, pp.29-38. ISSN 0120-6230.

Manipulation of micrometric objects at the single level is one of the most important research fields because these techniques can be applied to handle biological material. The objective of this paper consists of presenting a microsystem designed for particle microhandling. The operating principle of the device hinges upon dielectrophoresis, which is the lateral motion of electrical neutral matter under the influence of non-uniform electric fields. In practice, the device was made on a silicon substrate onto which interdigitated castellated microelectrodes made of platinum were patterned by lift-off. Moreover, the microchamber walls were patterned in a photocurable resin which allows a constant sample volume during the experiments. Besides this, the chip was tested with polystyrene microspheres of 4.2 μm in diameter and some results of common dielectrophoresis and particle clustering are also presented. Microparticle aggregation patterns are consistent with the electric field profile calculated by the finite element method over the electrode surface.

Keywords : dielectrophoresis; microparticle clustering; microsystems; finite element method.

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