(251p) Assesment of Joule Heating Effects in Optimized Insulator Based Dielectrophoresis Devices

Insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) has been widely used for particle and cell manipulation. It relies in the inclusion of insulator structures between two remote electrodes to create non-uniform electric fields and induce polarization effects into the particles to produce a net movement. If this force overcomes all other forces in the system, trapping can be achieved. Usually, this requires high electric potentials, especially if the particles are small in size, which increases temperature due to Joule heating, having setbacks such as a possible damage to the sample, bubble formation, undesired electro-thermal effects, etc. To improve performance of iDEP microdevices, optimization of the insulatorâ??s shape and size has been performed which increased the dielectrophoretic effect by increasing the gradient of the electric field square. In this work, 3D mathematical simulations were developed in order to validate the optimized microdevices when Joule heating effects are considered. These results can open a new perspective of a balance between increasing the dielectrophoretic force to improve manipulation of particles and cells, without increasing the system temperature to undesired values.