Experimental study on circulating filtration of micro particles based on metal rubber and dielectrophoretic effect

In order to improve the filtration capacity of the metal rubber sheet, the porous metal rubber sheet is combined with the dielectrophoresis, and the high-efficiency pumping function of the liquid metal droplet in the confined space is utilized to research the filtration performance of the metal rubber sheet on the 5 μm polystyrene microspheres. A pair of metal rubber sheets is parallelly embedded in the close-looped circulating microfluidics channel to achieve an AC field gradient for effective dielectrophoresis. The results show that it is difficult to realize the filtering function without applying an AC electric field as the aperture of the pores inside the metal rubber sheet is much larger than the diameter of latex beads. As long as the two pairs of electrodes are energized synergistically, the suspended colloids can be trapped by short-range dielectrophoresis force near the metal rubber sheets, which can significantly improve the filtering quality.