Surface-acoustic-wave driven silicon microfluidic chips for acoustic tweezing of motile cells and viscoelastic microbeads

TL;DR

This paper presents a silicon microfluidic chip with surface acoustic wave technology for non-contact manipulation of cells and microbeads, achieving high acoustic pressure suitable for delicate biological samples.

Contribution

It introduces a novel device structure and assembly method that enhances acoustic pressure for microfluidic applications involving motile cells and viscoelastic particles.

Findings

Achieved acoustic pressure up to 2 MPa at 50 MHz

Enabled non-contact deformation of soft matter

Successfully trapped motile cells using the device

Abstract

Acoustic tweezers comprising a surface acoustic wave chip and a disposable silicon microfluidic chip are potentially advantageous to stable and cost-ffective acoustofluidic experiments while avoiding the cross-contamination by reusing the surface acoustic wave chip and disposing of the microfluidic chip. For such a device, it is important to optimize the chip-to-chip bonding and the size and shape of the microfluidic chip to enhance the available acoustic pressure. In this work, aiming at studying samples with the size of a few tens of microns, we explore the device structure and assembly method of acoustic tweezers. By using a polymer bonding layer and shaping the silicon microfluidic chip via deep reactive ion etching, we were able to attain the acoustic pressure up to 2 MPa with a corresponding acoustic radiation pressure of 0.2 kPa for 50 MHz ultrasound, comparable to reported values at lower ultrasound frequencies. We utilized the fabricated acoustic tweezers for non-contact viscoelastic deformation experiments of soft matter and trapping of highly motile cells. These results suggests that the feasibility of the hybrid chip approach to attaining the high acoustic force required to conduct acoustomechanical testing of small soft matters and cells.