A Hybrid Integrated-Circuit/Microfluidic Device for Positioning, Porating and Fusing Individual Cells

Here we report a hybrid integrated-circuit/microfluidic device which can position, porate and fuse individual cells. Existing electroporation and fusion devices can only act on cells in bulk. Our device consists of a microarray of electrode pixels$^{1}$ and a grounded conducting plate. Cells were positioned with dielectrophoretic forces induced by the pixels and porated or fused with voltage pulses which caused a dielectric breakdown of the cell membrane. The device positioned cells with 10$\mu $m precision and porated or fused them with high yields. It is programmable and mass-parallelization on a single device enables bulk applications. $^{1}$ T. Hunt, D. Issadore, R. Westervelt, \textit{Lab on a Chip}, 2008, \textbf{8}, 81-87.