High‐throughput dielectrophoretic separator based on printed circuit boards

Abstract

The separation of particles with respect to their intrinsic properties is an ongoing task in various fields such as biotechnology and recycling of electronic waste.Especially for small particles in the lower micrometer or nanometer range, separation techniques are a field of current research since many existing approaches lack either throughput or selectivity. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a technique that can address multiple particle properties, making it a potential candidate to solve challenging separation tasks. Currently, DEP is mostly used in microfluidic separators and thus limited in throughput. Additionally, DEP setups often require expensive components, such as electrode arrays fabricated in the clean room.Here, we present and characterize a separator based on two inexpensive customdesigned printed circuit boards (80 × 120 mm board size). The boards consist of interdigitated electrode arrays with 250 μm electrode width and spacing. We demonstrate the separation capabilities using polystyrene particles ranging from 500 nm to 6 μm in monodisperse experiments. Further, we demonstrate selective trapping at flow rates up to 240 ml∕h in the presented device for a binary mixture. Our experiments demonstrate an affordable way to increase throughput in electrode-based DEP separators.

Low‐cost, high‐throughput and rapid‐prototyped 3D‐integrated dielectrophoretic channels for continuous cell enrichment and separation

“…Although the conductor/insulator structure described here is too flexible to allow easy milling, more rigid structures such as multiplayer PCB laminates should be sufficiently robust to allow channels to be milled. PCB-based manufacture is developing across a number of 'lab on a chip' applications to create the 'lab on a PCB' [40,41], and has already been used for multilayer DEP chip manufacture for separators [28] and characterisation [42]. This would allow significant scale up in manufacture, and could potentially yield mass-produced, high-volume and low-cost DEP separation devices.…”

Sorting Lithium-Ion Battery Electrode Materials Using Dielectrophoresis

“…The key feature of this device is two inexpensive (<1 €/pc.) custom-designed PCBs (manufactured by JiaLiChuang (Hong Kong) Co., Limited, China) with a size of 45 × 150 mm, which is slightly different from the previous design . The improved design showed similar performance with reduced PCB size and energy demand.…”

“…17 This can lead to a separation as was previously shown several times. 25,34,35 Whether a particle experiences pDEP or nDEP depends on the real part of the Clausius−Mossotti factor (CM), which is defined as 17 = + i k j j j j j j y…”

“…DEP is the movement of a polarizable particle in an inhomogeneous electric field. Usually, it is used in the biomedical field and primarily in microfluidic devices. , Although DEP is label-free and has high selectivity and capability of addressing nanometer- to micrometer-scaled particles, − few studies have addressed recycling or the throughput that would be required for this. − While DEP is well studied with biological samples, such as DNA , and cells, − the separation of nonbiological particles, besides polystyrene particles, is rarely described in the literature . This study is designed to expand this field by using artificial black mass to show that conductive particles can be addressed with an electrode-based DEP separator at high throughput.…”

Influence of the filter grain morphology on separation efficiency in dielectrophoretic filtration

“…However, they did not allow for the preparative scale throughputs that are usually well beyond the µL/min range [16]. Our group showed a pathway out of this throughput limitation for eDEP setups with the usage of custom-designed printed circuit boards which reduced significantly the fabrication costs and allowed for a scale up, currently up to 6 mL/min [19]. Additionally, other approaches such as dielectrophoretic field-flow fractionation can operate in the mL/min range, however, are further hard to scale [20].…”