Capture of individual charged micro-particles in a controllable way is the key function of electrostatic traps.
Nevertheless, the results mentioned later confirm that the remaining depth of the traps is still deep enough to trap individual or cluster of the charged micro-particles.
The centripetal transport of positively charged micro-particles adhered to the cell surface, by coupling to the intracellular actin network, is indicative of retrograde F-actin flow [13], [14].
With the help of an external field, charged micro-particles could be driven inside the microchannels, as shown in Fig. 5 (see Video 1 in supplemental file).
In this paper, we present a controllable electrostatic device embedded in a microchannel, which is capable of driving, trapping, and releasing charged micro-particles suspended in microfluid, demonstrating the basic concepts of electrostatic tweezers.
In summary, we have demonstrated basic concepts of ESTs, i.e., driving, trapping, and releasing charged micro-particles, with trapping and driving electrodes embedded in a microfluidic device.
The limited height of the microfluidic channel of our devices supported the Coulomb potential wells in firmly trapping charged micro-particles.
The fluctuations of a charged micro-particle in gaseous quadrupole Paul trap have been studied intensively in the past.
Recent theoretical [7 10] and experimental [11, 12] studies show feasibility of the aqueous Paul traps for localization and control of the motion of charged micro- and nano-particles.
In summary, at higher gas pressures, greater production of charged particles within micro-cavity over time and consequently increase in discharge current as well as charge accumulated on the anode and cathode dielectrics occurs.
