Contactless cell trapping by the use of a uniform AC electric field

The AC electric field-driven manipulation of suspended polarizable particles has become a major technique in micro- and nano-devices. In the present study, suspensions of cultured HeLa cells in isotonic solution were used to explore the mechanisms underlying the suspension behaviors during exposure to a uniform AC electric field of strength E(rms)=1.67×10(4) V/m at frequency 1 kHz. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations based on the Langevin equation of particle kinetics were performed to elucidate the corresponding problem. A theoretical model to compute the trajectories of individual cells under the action of electro-mechanical, viscous and gravitational forces in the suspending medium was newly developed. Numerical computations demonstrated that the suspended cells began to aggregate to form chainlike clusters along the direction of the uniform AC electric field at an earlier stage of the field application. Moreover, the predicted results were similar to the experimental results. These findings indicate that the chain-like cell clustering arises from the long-range dipole-dipole interaction of neighboring cells, but under the action of the gravitational force that likely hinders the growth of clusters in the vertical direction.