A FLEXIBLE HARDWARE PLATFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL CELL MANIPULATION AND DETECTION

摘要

Functional integration, flexibility and massive parallelism are the main features required for the next lab-on-a-chip (LOAC) generation. Embedded complex circuits of the size of a cell are required for single cell manipulation, while massive parallelism is feasible if individual cell manipulation and detection capabilities are integrated in a flexible and programmable hardware platform. An example of lab-on-a-chip for individual cell manipulation and detection is presented. The device is equipped with a bidimensional array of 320x320 individually addressable and programmable micro-sites; each site embeds both a sensor and an electrode. By individually programming the voltages applied to the electrodes a dielectrophoretic closed cage can be realized in correspondence of each micro-site. More than 10,000 cells can be trapped in stable levitation, each in a different cage and individually moved from one site to the next along the whole micro-chamber; a deterministic control on each cell location is assured by the "moving-cage" principle combined with optical sensors.