Fully Microfabricated Surface Acoustic Wave Tweezer for Collection of Submicron Particles and Human Blood Cells

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c00537
• Publication Date: 2023-05-15T23:34:50Z
• Authors: Armaghan Fakhfouri; Melanie Colditz; Citsabehsan Deven...; Kateryna Ivanova; Stefan Jacob; Adrian Neild; Andreas Winkler
• Keywords: Acoustic streaming; Tweezers; Acoustic Radiation Force; Microchannel; Particle (ecology); Acoustic levitation; Acoustic radiation

Precise manipulation of (sub)micron particles is key for the preparation, enrichment, and quality control in many biomedical applications. Surface acoustic waves (SAW) hold tremendous promise (bio)particles at micron to nanoscale ranges. In commonly used SAW tweezers, particle relies on direct radiation effect whose superior performance fades rapidly when progressing from due increasing dominance a second order mechanism, termed streaming. Through reproducible high-precision realization stiff microchannels reliably actuate microchannel cross-section, here we introduce an approach that allows otherwise competing streaming complement effect. The synergetic both mechanisms markedly enhances nanoparticles, down 200 nm particles, even relatively large wavelength (300 μm). Besides spherical ranging 0.1 3 μm, show collections cells mixed with different sizes shapes inherently existing blood including erythrocytes, leukocytes, thrombocytes.