Dielectrophoresis can be used to manipulate, transport, separate and sort different types of particles. DEP is being applied in fields such as medical diagnostics, drug discovery, cell therapeutics, and particle filtration.
DEP has been also used in conjunction with semiconductor chip technology for the development of DEP array technology for the simultaneous management of thousands of cells in microfluidic devices. Single microelectrodes on the floor of a flow cell are managed by a CMOS chip to form thousands of dielectrophoretic "cages", each capable of capturing and moving one single cell under control of routing software.
As biological cells have dielectric properties, dielectrophoresis has many biological and medical applications. Instruments capable of separating cancer cells from healthy cells have been made as well as isolating single cells from forensic mixed samples. Platelets have been separated from whole blood with a DEP-activated cell sorter.
DEP has made it possible to characterize and manipulate biological particles like blood cells, stem cells, neurons, pancreatic β cells, DNA, chromosomes, proteins and viruses.
DEP can be used to separate particles with different sign polarizabilities as they move in different directions at a given frequency of the AC field applied. DEP has been applied for the separation of live and dead cells, with the remaining live cells still viable after separation or to force contact between selected single cells to study cell-cell interaction.
DEP has been used to separate strains of bacteria and viruses. DEP can also be used to detect apoptosis soon after drug induction measuring the changes in electrophysiological properties.