Biological Particle Control and Separation using Active Forces in Microfluidic Environments

Abstract

Exploration of active manipulation of bioparticles has been impacted by the development of micro-/nanofluidic technologies, enabling evident observation of particle responses by means of applied tunable external force field, namely, dielectrophoresis (DEP), magnetophoresis (MAG), acoustophoresis (ACT), thermophoresis (THM), and optical tweezing or trapping (OPT). In this chapter, each mechanism is presented in brief yet concise, for broad range of readers, as strong foundation for amateur as well as brainstorming source for experts. The discussion covers the fundamental mechanism that underlying the phenomenon, presenting the theoretical and schematic description; how the response being tuned; and utmost practical, the understanding by specific implementation into bioparticles manipulation engaging from micron-sized material down to molecular level particles.