Dielectrophoretic focusing of particles in a microchannel constriction using DC-biased AC flectric fields

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.