PROVIDING DEP MANIPULATION DEVICES AND CONTROLLABLE ELECTROWETTING DEVICES IN THE SAME MICROFLUIDIC APPARATUS

摘要

A microfluidic apparatus is provided that comprises a combination of dielectrophoresis (DEP) configurations each having an outer surface and electrowetting (EW) configurations each having an electrowetting surface. The DEP configurations can facilitate generating net DEP forces with respect to the outer surfaces of the DEP configurations to move micro-objects on the outer surfaces, and the EW configurations can facilitate changing wetting properties of the electrowetting surfaces to move droplets of liquid medium on the electrowetting surfaces. The EW configurations can be used to split a first part of a droplet of liquid medium from a second part of the droplet, while the DEP configurations can be used to move selected micro-objects into the first part of the droplet, before splitting of the droplet occurs.