An iDEP Based Single Cell Encapsulation Microfluidic Device Using Lift-Off Technique

We present here an insulator based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) chip capable of single cell trapping and encapsulation with high efficiency. The proposed microfluidic chip can be easily tuned for trapping various size of cells. This microfluidic device is fabricated using a technique called lift off polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS). The fabrication technique eliminates the difficulty in handling a thin membrane with a large number of holes. The device also has advantage of generating droplets of very small volume. We have demonstrated the working of chip using THP1 cells. We have achieved efficiency of 90% for single cell encapsulation.