Abstract
Recently, MEMS has been a good tool in application of molecular and cellular biotechnology researches because the scale fit to the size of the molecule and cell. For medical and pharmaceutical purposes, development of new and modified single cell characterization techniques could allow individual cell-based diagnostic assays and product a lot of highly specialized cells. Therefore, to separate, sort out, purify and detect target biological particles/molecules like DNA, proteins, viruses, and cells from very low-concentration sample solution has been important. In the past, research workers publish some technology such as optical tweezers, magnetic tweezers, microgripper, and etc. to manipulate and separate cells, proteins, and DNA. Even with such technology advances and impressive technology demonstration, the high effective separation, sorting, and purification for target bio-molecules in a very low-concentration sample solution are still a big challenge for practical applications and attractive research topics. Hence, this thesis introduce a novel theory, dielectrophoresis, (DEP) to manipulate and separate cells with non-concact force by the programmable DEP array. Firstly, this thesis first introduces the survey of literatures, and prove the feasibility of the design concepts via theoretical and numerical analysis with CFD-RC. Through the MEMS fabrication processes, a device with programmable DEP array is realized to demonstrate the function of manipulation and separation. Furthermore, we address a integrated biochip for the applications of trapping and adaptive multi-sorting proteins using DEP array.