Modeling the trajectory of a micro particle in a dielectrophoresis device.

International audienceMicro and nano-particles can be trapped by a non uniform electric field through the effect of dielectrophoretic principle. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is used to separate, manipulate and detect micro particles in several domains, such as in biological or Carbon Nano-Tubes (CNTs) manipulations. Current methods to simulate the trajectory of micro-particles under a DEP force field are based on Finite Elements Modeling (FEM) which requires new simulations when the electrodes potentials are changed, or on analytic equations which are limited to very simple geometries. In this paper, we propose an hybrid method between analytical and numerical calculations able to simulate complex geometries and to easily change the electrode potential along the trajectory. In this method a few FEM simulations are used to create a database which enables online calculation of the object trajectory in function of the electrode potentials. In order to verify the simulation results, experiments are done and compared to the simulations