Levitation of red blood cells in microchannel for microfluidic MEMS healthcare device application

Abstract In this work, the microchannel structure for microfluidic MEMS device application is designed with finite element method for the levitation of red blood cells as a microparticle using the dielectrophoresis phenomenon. The levitation of targeted cells with vertical manipulation can be utilized for cell isolation. The electric field in the microchannel for the levitation of RBCs is achieved with the 300 nm grown gold interdigitated electrodes in a 60 × 40 × 400 (μm3) size microchannel excited using 2 V at 100 kHz frequency. Finite element analysis results have shown sufficient vertical manipulation of microparticles modelled as red blood cells in the vertical direction against the gravitational force in deionized (DI) water as the fluidic medium.