Figure 2

Simulations of electric fields generated in our device as a function of applied voltage. (A) A combination of convective transport due to imposed flow and diffusive mixing contribute to the steady-state fluid conductivity distribution in our device. High-conductivity RPMI (\(\sigma\) = 14 mS/cm) is introduced into each side inlet at 550 μl/min, and low-conductivity BTXpress electroporation media with cells and mRNA (\(\sigma \approx\) 0.5 mS/cm) is introduced into the center stream. The conductivity of the cell stream increases toward the device outlet due to infiltration of ions from the side streams by diffusion. The midplane in channel depth is shown. (B) Electric field magnitude distribution that results when 70 V is applied to the electrodes. Due to the conductivity distribution, the electric field magnitude is much higher in the cell stream. Mixing of the high and low-conductivity streams due to diffusion compresses and intensifies the high-field region near the outlet. (C) Spatially-averaged electric field magnitude in the cell stream as a function of applied voltage. (A) and (B) were generated using COMSOL Multiphysics software and (C) was generated using GraphPad Prism software.