Effects of wire diameter, yarns size and wire configuration to wire cloth electrode produced from textile technology for dielectrophoresis application

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is one of an alternative way for cell separation. It has mainly been limited to processing small volumes due to constrain in fabrication of microelectrode over large surface areas. This work focuses on optimizing the wire cloth electrode fabricated from the use of textile technology. The plain-weave wire cloth consists of stainless steel wires as the microelectrode arrays and polyester yarn as the insulator. The study involved producing wire cloth electrode with variations of wire diameters, yarn sizes and wire configuration (single or double twisted). Simulation using FEMLAB software was conducted to study the electric field generated from the wire cloth. The performance of the finished wire cloth electrode was then tested by conducting a small-scale separation experiment. It was found that larger diameter wire electrode and smaller yarn size resulted to higher electric field strength. In regards to wire configuration, double twisted wire led to higher electric field intensity and better nonuniformity with 1.25% and 9.29% higher cell separation yield recorded than single wire for 100μm and 71 μm, respectively. (paper)