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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

AC Electrokinetic Phenomena Generated by Microelectrode Structures
Published on: July 28, 2008
Dielectrophoretic focusing of particles in a microchannel constriction using DC-biased AC flectric fields
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0921, USA.
Abstract:
This paper presents a fundamental study of particle electrokinetic focusing in a single microchannel constriction. Through both experiments and simulations, we demonstrate that such dielectrophoresis-induced particle focusing can be implemented in a much smaller magnitude of DC-biased AC electric fields (10 kV/m in total) as compared to pure DC electric fields (up to 100 kV/m). This is attributed to the increase in the ratio of cross-stream particle dielectrophoretic velocity to streamwise electrokinetic velocity as only the DC field component contributes to the latter. The effects of the 1 kHz frequency AC to DC electric field ratio on particle trajectories and velocity variations through the microchannel constriction are also examined, which are found to agree with the simulation results.
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