Of late, there has been much progress in assisted reproductive technology (ART) which is used to achieve pregnancy. ART is used not only to obtain higher rates of pregnancy but also for reducing communicable diseases, solving genetic disorders, and, even, sex selection. To improve ART beyond some limitations, microfluidic systems have been introduced as bio-sensing devices. As reported in the previous work, sperms with the different chromosomes X and Y have different electrical charges.

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... e, a specially designed microfluidic device with microelectrodes was fabricated to sort the different electrically charged particles. In order to examine the device, TiO2-coated polystyrene beads (TiO2-coated Ps-beads) were synthesized. The processes that are employed to fabricate and characterize the beads, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Tungsten Scanning Electron Microscopy (W-SEM) with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) mode, and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS), have been reported in this work. Results show that TiO2 was partly coated on the Ps-beads in the mixed form of amorphous Ti4+ and had caused a negative charge to appear on the surface after fabrication and had sustained the charge for long. The beads were tested using a microfluidic device installed with microelectrodes, and it was found that the device could successfully separate the negatively charged particles from the neutral ones.