Cells Electrical Characterization: Dielectric Properties, Mixture, and Modeling Theories

Table 4

Electric fields used for cell manipulation.

Physical force field	Spatial resolution	Field effect on the cell viability	Variation directly in the growth medium?	Number of cells controlled at once	Typical volume
Optical	Very high, in nanometers	(i) Low heating	Yes	Few hundreds of cells	pL
Electrical	Typically in micrometers	(i) Heating	Tough	Single cell to millions of cells	μL-mL
		(i) Breaking down of the membrane at high fields
Magnetic	Typically in micrometers	(i) Needs magnetizable cells; otherwise, negligible	Yes	Single cell to millions of cells	μL-mL
Ultrasound	Low, in tens of micrometers	Slight	Yes	Multimillions of cells	mL