(237d) Dielectrophoretic Cell Sorters for High Purity and Throughput

Microfluidics by nature deals normally with low throughput. In practical applications such as clinical diagnostics or environmental detection, sometimes relatively large sample handling is required. In sample preparation, high purity of sample is often demanded. Here we present two new microfluidic cell sorters based on negative dielectrophoresis (DEP) for continuous flow operations. One is a cascade configuration sorter designed to increase purity of isolated target cell. And the other one has two staggered side channels in opposite side walls to increase sample throughput without compromising enrichment factor. We first used Particles (carboxylate microspheres) of different sizes to demonstrate the feasibility of the present DEP sorters for cell isolation. Then biological cells, i.e. human prostate cancer cell line LNCaP and human colorectal cancer cell line HCT116 were used to test the performance of the DEP sorters. Comparing to a single side channel DEP cell sorter, the isolation purity was improved from 80% to 96% by single cascade sorter and the sample throughput was increased from 0.2 µL/min to 0.65 µL/min by a single staggered side channel sorter.