Metal Coated Chemically Etched Fiber Probe for Single Cell Manipulation and Isolation

Abstract

　In this paper, dielectrophoresis tweezers using metal coated chemically etched fiber was proposed for cell manipulation and isolation. We proposed a simple and low cost dielectrophoretic device for picking out and relocating single target cells. The device consists of metal coated chemically etched fibers and an AC signal generator. It does not require microfabrication technologies or sophisticated electronics. From experimental results, it was found that our proposed dielectrophoretic manipulator could discriminate between live and dead cells. We also could see the cell reproduction of yeast cells trapped and isolated using our proposed dielectrophoresis tweezers.