Enhanced cargo loading of electrically powered metallo-dielectric pollen bearing multiple dielectrophoretic traps

The use of active particles for cargo transport offers unique potential for applications ranging from targeted drug delivery to lab-on-a-particle systems. Previously, deployment of metallo-dielectric Janus spherical particles (JPs) as mobile microelectrodes for transport and dielectrophoretic manipulation of cargo has been shown to be singularly controlled via an applied electric field. Herein, we extended this to a metallo-dielectric pollen featuring multiple dielectrophoretic traps associated with its many spikes, and characterized its loading capacities for various cargo sizes and frequencies. When compared to spherical JPs, the active pollen exhibited a significantly enhanced cargo loading capacity due to its multiple dielectrophoretic traps. These findings open new opportunities for application of bio-hybrid particles with diverse and irregular shapes, such as pollen, as efficient cargo carriers, local electroporation and targeted drug delivery.