Abstract

Precise Cell Manipulation Using Highly Focused Acoustic Fields

Ye Ai, Assistant Professor, Singapore University Of Technology And Design

Precise manipulation of particles and biological cells is an essential process in various biomedical research fields, industrial and clinical applications. Among various force fields applied for microfluidic cell manipulation, acoustic waves have superior propagating properties in solids and fluids, which can readily enable non-contact cell manipulation in long operating distances. In addition, acoustic fields are advantageous to high power laser beams for non-contact optical tweezing in terms of biocompatibility, throughput and setup simplicity. Exploiting acoustic waves for fluid and cell manipulation in microfluidics has led to a newly emerging research area, acoustofluidics. In this presentation, I will talk about particle and cell manipulation in microfluidics using highly focused surface acoustic waves (SAW). In particular, I will discuss a unique design of a focused interdigital transducer (FIDT) structure, which is able to generate a highly localized SAW field on the order of 30-50 µm wide. This highly focused acoustic beam has an effective manipulation area size that is comparable to individual micron-sized particles. Here, I demonstrate the use of this highly localized SAW field for fluorescence activated single cell level sorting with high cell viability.