Dielectrophoretic concentrator enhancement based on dielectric poles for continuously flowing samples

We describe a novel continuous-flow cell concentrator microdevice based on dielectrophoresis, and its associated custom-made control unit. The performances of a classical interdigitated metal electrode-based dielectrophoresis microfluidic device and this enhanced version, that includes insulator-based pole structures, were compared using the same setup. Escherichia coli samples were concentrated at several continuous flows and the device's trapping efficiencies were evaluated by exhaustive cell counts. Our results show that pole structures enhance the retention up to 12.6%, obtaining significant differences for flow rates up to 20 μL/min, when compared to an equivalent classical interdigitated electrodes setup. In addition, we performed a subsequent proteomic analysis to evaluate the viability of the biological samples after the long exposure to the actuating electrical field. No Escherichia coli protein alteration in any of the two systems was observed.