UC Berkeley

Electric fields delivered across biological cells can cause structural and functional changes to the cell membrane, such as electroporation. An important application of electroporation is in the permeabilization of skin cells. Currently these cells are electroporated with contact electrodes. In this study we explore the feasibility of using electromagnetic induction for non-contact electroporation of skin cells, and the effect of various design parameters on the process. We derived a simple analytical solution that lends itself to a systematic study of design parameters and verified the solution with a numeric solution of the Maxwell equations using finite elements. A short feasibility study of the system implementation is done, concluding that there are technological limitations that must be met in the future in order to build such a device.