Abstract
The precise manipulation of acoustic fields in microfluidics is of critical importance for the realization of many biomedical applications. Despite the tremendous efforts devoted to the field of acoustofluidics during recent years, dexterous control, with an arbitrary and complex acoustic wavefront, in a prescribed, microscale region is still out of reach. Here, we introduce the concept of acoustofluidic waveguide, a three-dimensional compact configuration that is capable of locally guiding acoustic waves into a fluidic environment. Through comprehensive numerical simulations, we revealed the possibility of forming complex field patterns with defined pressure nodes within a highly localized, pre-determined region inside the microfluidic chamber. We also demonstrated the tunability of the acoustic field profile through controlling the size and shape of the waveguide geometry, as well as the operational frequency of the acoustic wave. The feasibility of the waveguide concept was experimentally verified via microparticle trapping and patterning. Our acoustofluidic waveguiding structures can be readily integrated with other microfluidic configurations and can be further designed into more complex types of passive acoustofluidic devices. The waveguide platform provides a promising alternative to current acoustic manipulation techniques and is useful in many applications such as single-cell analysis, point-of-care diagnostics, and studies of cell–cell interactions.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Wu Liu, Dr. Peng Li, Dr. Po-Hsun Huang, Dr. Yi Zhang, Dr. Marten Darmawan, Dr. Yuliang Xie, Chungyu Chan, Mengxi Wu, and Peiran Zhang for fruitful discussions. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Institutes of Health (R01 GM112048 and R33 EB019785) and the National Science Foundation (IIP-1534645 and IDBR-1455658). Components of this work were conducted at the Penn State node of the NSF-funded National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network. The authors also acknowledge the Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure Unit of Information Technology Services at The Pennsylvania State University for providing advanced computing resources and services that have contributed to the research results reported in this article.
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Bian, Y., Guo, F., Yang, S. et al. Acoustofluidic waveguides for localized control of acoustic wavefront in microfluidics. Microfluid Nanofluid 21, 132 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-017-1971-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-017-1971-y