Distributed Effect in High-Frequency Electroporation of Biological Cells

Electroporation of Jurkat T-lymphoma human cells was investigated using 10-MHz continuous waves and benchmarked against that at 100 kHz. Both cell poration and cell death were simultaneously monitored by fluorescence microscopy, and found to occur under approximately four times higher voltages at 10 MHz than that at 100 kHz. This weaker-than-expected increase in poration threshold could be explained by detailed analysis of the distributed effect often ignored in electroporation studies.