In-plane microvortices micromixer-based AC electrothermal for testing drug induced death of tumor cells

Abstract

Herein, we first describe a perfusion chip integrated with an AC electrothermal (ACET) micromixer to supply a uniform drug concentration to tumor cells. The inplane fluid microvortices for mixing were generated by six pairs of reconstructed novel ACET asymmetric electrodes. To enhance the mixing efficiency, the novel ACET electrodes with rotating angles of 0_, 30_ , and 60_ were investigated. The asymmetric electrodes with a rotating angle of 60_ exhibited the highest mixing efficiency by both simulated and experimental results. The length of the mixing area is 7 mm, and the mixing efficiency is 89.12% (approximate complete mixing) at a voltage of 3V and a frequency of 500 kHz. The applicability of our micromixer with electrodes rotating at 60_ was demonstrated by the drug (tamoxifen) test of human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) for five days, which implies that our ACET inplane microvortices micromixer has great potential for the application of drug induced rapid death of tumor cells and mixing of biomaterials in organs-on-a-chip systems.