Low-cost acoustic force trap in a microfluidic channel

Tsan, Vi hung; Fan, D.; Caneva, S.; Smith, C.S.; Verbiest, G.J.

doi:10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00428

Low-cost acoustic force trap in a microfluidic channel

Title

Low-cost acoustic force trap in a microfluidic channel

Author

Tsan, Vi hung (Student TU Delft)
Fan, D. (TU Delft Team Carlas Smith)
Caneva, S. (TU Delft Dynamics of Micro and Nano Systems)
Smith, C.S. (TU Delft BN/Nynke Dekker Lab; TU Delft ImPhys/Rieger group; TU Delft Team Carlas Smith; TU Delft ImPhys/Computational Imaging)
Verbiest, G.J. (TU Delft Dynamics of Micro and Nano Systems)

Date

2023

Abstract

A low-cost glass-based microfluidic flow cell with a piezo actuator is built using off-the-shelf parts (total cost €9 per device) to apply acoustophoretic force on polystyrene micro-beads. The main challenge in the fabrication of these devices was to ensure their leak tightness, which we solved using double-sided tape and nail polish. Beads with 1.5 μm diameter flowing in a 100 μm deep channel were trapped at 7.5 MHz using a 23.7 peak-to-peak voltage (V_pp) sinusoidal input. The trap located at 50 ± 0.1 μm depth was measured to have a stiffness of approximately 0.6 pN/μm. With this simple device we can trap and control the axial position of micrometer scale objects, which allows for the manipulation of beads and cells. We intend to use the device for force spectroscopy on micro-bead tethered DNA. This can be combined with super-resolution imaging techniques to study mechanics and binding of protein structures along a DNA strand as a function of induced tension.

Subject

Acoustic force spectroscopy
Acoustic trapping
Acoustophoretic
Low-cost
Microfluidics

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:dc7862b5-579b-4253-aa91-de46acdf5c1a

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00428

ISSN

2468-0672

Source

HardwareX, 14

Part of collection

Institutional Repository