The 2D electric field above a planar sequence of independent strip electrodes

This paper describes an analytical solution for the electrostatic potential and electric field in dielectrophoretic (DEP) microfluidic devices. DEP devices are engineered to be DNA concentrators in automated, flow-through systems of sample preparation for biological assays. DEP devices deflect and trap particles suspended in liquid flows because macromolecular particles polarize in response to an electric field, and the coupling of this polarization with the field alters particle motions. The DEP effect is proportional to ∇( E · E ). The electric field is produced by a sequence of independent strip electrodes and is two dimensional throughout the volume of the flow. As the potentials used in DEP devices are low-frequency sinusoids, the field of interest is the gradient of the squared root-mean-square (rms) of the electric field, ∇ E rms 2 . An example of this field is shown.