Three-Dimensional Arrangements of Polystyrene Latex Particles with a Hyperbolic Quadruple Electrode System

Abstract

An attempt was made to arrange polystyrene latex particles (2, 5, and 10 microm in diameter) dispersed in aqueous media making use of their dielectrophoresis and electrophoresis with a hyperbolic quadruple electrode system. Application of a high-frequency ac field enabled the particles to arrange themselves between the electrodes forming a particle monolayer due to the negative dielectrophoretic force. Simultaneous application of high-frequency ac and dc fields caused the particles to gather in the region surrounded by the electrodes to form particle multilayers. Appropriate choice of the way of applying an electric field thus allowed the reversible control of particle arrangements (monolayer, multilayer, dispersion). Reapplication of an ac field to the particle layers produced highly dense particle multilayers.

Dielectrophoretic assembly of grain-boundary-free 2D colloidal single crystals

“…Negative DEP force at high frequency in hyperbolic quadrupolar electrodes with a non-uniform gap enforced the concentration of microspheres, thus allowing colloidal crystal domains at the center of the electrodes [41]. In our study, similar experiments were conducted using hexapolarshaped electrodes embedded in a microfluidic chamber, as shown in Fig.…”

“…Recently, dielectrophoretic assembly of colloidal microspheres has been reported as a rapid and convenient method to construct 2D colloidal crystals [10,36,41]. Negative DEP force at high frequency in hyperbolic quadrupolar electrodes with a non-uniform gap enforced the concentration of microspheres, thus allowing colloidal crystal domains at the center of the electrodes [41].…”

“…This is based on the polarizability difference between metallic and semiconducting-type carbon nanotubes. Construction of 2D or 3D photonic crystals is another promising application of the DEP technique [36,41]. A quadrupolar type of electrode in conjunction with the DEP technique was suggested to be an efficient way to fabricate 2D opaline arrays [41,42].…”

“…Construction of 2D or 3D photonic crystals is another promising application of the DEP technique [36,41]. A quadrupolar type of electrode in conjunction with the DEP technique was suggested to be an efficient way to fabricate 2D opaline arrays [41,42]. The negative DEP force acting on the non-parallel shaped channel between neighboring electrodes induces particle concentration at the center of four electrodes, allowing a colloidal crystalline structure.…”

Lab-on-a-display: a new microparticle manipulation platform using a liquid crystal display (LCD)

“…Due to its ability to handle cells or particles without any modification of them, it has become one of the most attractive manipulation techniques in a microfluidic device or a lab-on-a-chip. In recent studies, many research groups have revealed the dielectric properties of polystyrene microbeads (Abe et al 2004;Choi and Park 2005), DNA (Lao and Hsing 2005), bacteria (Li and Bashir 2002;Lagally et al 2005), yeast (Perch-Nielsen et al 2003;Doh and Cho 2005), leukocytes (Wang et al 2000), and erythrocytes (Minerick et al 2003). The dielectrophoretic force is described as follows:…”