Theoretical and experimental study of the role of cell-cell dipole interaction in dielectrophoretic devices: application to polynomial electrodes

BACKGROUND: We aimed to investigate the effect of cell-cell dipole interactions in the equilibrium distributions in dielectrophoretic devices. METHODS: We used a three dimensional coupled Monte Carlo-Poisson method to theoretically study the final distribution of a system of uncharged polarizable particles suspended in a static liquid medium under the action of an oscillating non-uniform electric field generated by polynomial electrodes. The simulated distributions have been compared with experimental ones observed in the case of MDA-MB-231 cells in the same operating conditions. RESULTS: The real and simulated distributions are consistent. In both cases the cells distribution near the elec…