AC Electrokinetics for Bioanalysis on a Microchip

Abstract

AC electrokinetics is concerned with an induced motion of particles and fluids under nonuniform AC electric fields in microscale. The physicochemical nature of this phenomena, which cannot be observed in macroscale, is of great interest. In addition, AC electokinetics can be easily induced by the use of microelectrodes, which can be easily integrated into microchannels. In this paper, applications are described of AC electrokinetics as unit operations in bioanalysis on a microchip. AC electrokinetic fluid flow was utilized to mix fluids in a short time. The principle of cloud point extraction was combined with AC electrokinetics to concentrate membrane-associated biomolecules in a microchannel. These operations will contribute to the functionalization of microchip for bioanalysis.