Elastomeric negative acoustic contrast particles for capture, acoustophoretic transport, and confinement of cells in microfluidic systems

Surface Acoustic Wave-Based Microfluidic Device for Microparticles Manipulation: Effects of Microchannel Elasticity on the Device Performance

Size sorting, line focusing, and isolation of microparticles or cells are fundamental ingredients in the improvement of disease diagnostic tools adopted in biology and biomedicine. Microfluidic devices are exploited as a solution to transport and manipulate (bio)particles via a liquid flow. Use of acoustic waves traveling through the fluid provides non-contact solutions to the handling goal, by exploiting the acoustophoretic phenomenon. In this paper, a finite element model of a microfluidic surface acoustic wave-based device for the manipulation of microparticles is reported. Counter-propagating waves are designed to interfere inside a PDMS microchannel and generate a standing surface acoustic wave which is transmitted to the fluid as a standing pressure field. A model of the cross-section of the device is considered to perform a sensitivity analysis of such a standing pressure field to uncertainties related to the geometry of the microchannel, especially in terms of thickness and width of the fluid domain. To also assess the effects caused by possible secondary waves traveling in the microchannel, the PDMS is modeled as an elastic solid material. Remarkable effects and possible issues in microparticle actuation, as related to the size of the microchannel, are discussed by way of exemplary results.

Magnetophoretic circuits: A review of device designs and implementation for precise single-cell manipulation

Lab-on-a-chip tools have played a pivotal role in advancing modern biology and medicine. A key goal in this field is to precisely transport single particles and cells to specific locations on a chip for quantitative analysis. To address this large and growing need, magnetophoretic circuits have been developed in the last decade to manipulate a large number of single bioparticles in a parallel and highly controlled manner. Inspired by electrical circuits, magnetophoretic circuits are composed of passive and active circuit elements to offer commensurate levels of control and automation for transporting individual bioparticles. These specifications make them unique compared to other technologies in addressing crucial bioanalytical applications and answering fundamental questions buried in highly heterogeneous cell populations. In this comprehensive review, we describe key theoretical considerations for manufacturing and simulating magnetophoretic circuits. We provide a detailed tutorial for operating magnetophoretic devices containing different circuit elements (e.g., conductors, diodes, capacitors, and transistors). Finally, we provide a critical comparison of the utility of these devices to other microchip-based platforms for cellular manipulation, and discuss how they may address unmet needs in single-cell biology and medicine.

Biomolecular actuators for genetically selective acoustic manipulation of cells

The ability to physically manipulate specific cells is critical for the fields of biomedicine, synthetic biology, and living materials. Ultrasound has the ability to manipulate cells with high spatiotemporal precision via acoustic radiation force (ARF). However, because most cells have similar acoustic properties, this capability is disconnected from cellular genetic programs. Here, we show that gas vesicles (GVs)-a unique class of gas-filled protein nanostructures-can serve as genetically encodable actuators for selective acoustic manipulation. Because of their lower density and higher compressibility relative to water, GVs experience strong ARF with opposite polarity to most other materials. When expressed inside cells, GVs invert the cells' acoustic contrast and amplify the magnitude of their ARF, allowing the cells to be selectively manipulated with sound waves based on their genotype. GVs provide a direct link between gene expression and acoustomechanical actuation, opening a paradigm for selective cellular control in a broad range of contexts.

Acoustophoresis of a resonant elastic microparticle in a viscous fluid medium

This work presents three-dimensional (3D) numerical analysis of acoustic radiation force on an elastic microsphere suspended in a viscous fluid. Acoustophoresis of finite-sized, neutrally buoyant, nearly incompressible soft particles may improve by orders of magnitude and change directions when going through resonant vibrations. These findings offer the potential to manipulate and separate microparticles based on their resonance frequency. This concept has profound implications in cell and microparticle handling, 3D printing, and enrichment in lab-on-chip applications. The existing analytical body of work can predict spheroidal harmonics of an elastic sphere and acoustic radiation force based on monopole and dipole scatter in an ideal fluid. However, little attention is given to the complex interplay of resonant fluid and solid bodies that generate acoustic radiation. The finite element method is used to find resonant modes, damping factors, and acoustic forces of an elastic sphere subject to a standing acoustic wave. Under fundamental spheroidal modes, the radiation force fluctuates significantly around analytical values due to constructive or destructive scatter-incident wave interference. This suggests that for certain materials, relevant to acoustofluidic applications, particle resonances are an important scattering mechanism and design parameter. The 3D model may be applied to any number of particles regardless of geometry or background acoustic field.

Two-Step Acoustophoresis Separation of Live Tumor Cells from Whole Blood

There is an unmet clinical need to extract living circulating tumor cells (CTCs) for functional studies and in vitro expansion to enable drug testing and predict responses to therapy in metastatic cancer. Here, we present a novel two-step acoustophoresis (A²) method for isolation of unfixed, viable cancer cells from red blood cell (RBC) lysed whole blood. The A² method uses an initial acoustofluidic preseparation step to separate cells based on their acoustic mobility. This acoustofluidic step enriches viable cancer cells in a central outlet, but a significant number of white blood cells (WBCs) remain in the central outlet fraction due to overlapping acoustophysical properties of these viable cells. A subsequent purging step was employed to remove contaminating WBCs through negative selection acoustophoresis with anti-CD45-functionalized negative acoustic contrast particles. We processed 1 mL samples of 1:1 diluted RBC lysed whole blood mixed with 10 000 DU145 cells through the A² method. Additional experiments were performed using 1000 DU145 cells spiked into 1.5 × 10⁶ WBCs in 1 mL of buffer to further elucidate the dynamic range of the method. Using samples with 10 000 DU145 cells, we obtained 459 ± 188-fold depletion of WBC and 42% recovery of viable cancer cells. Based on spiked samples with 1000 DU145 cells, our cancer cell recovery was 28% with 247 ± 156-fold WBC depletion corresponding to a depletion efficacy of ≥99.5%. The novel A² method provides extensive elimination of WBCs combined with the gentle recovery of viable cancer cells suitable for downstream functional analyses and in vitro culture.

Rapid capture of biomolecules from blood via stimuli-responsive elastomeric particles for acoustofluidic separation

The detection of biomarkers in blood often requires extensive and time-consuming sample preparation to remove blood cells and concentrate the biomarker(s) of interest. We demonstrate proof-of-concept for a chip-based, acoustofluidic method that enables the rapid capture and isolation of a model protein biomarker (i.e., streptavidin) from blood for off-chip quantification. Our approach makes use of two key components - namely, soluble, thermally responsive polypeptides fused to ligands for the homogeneous capture of biomarkers from whole blood and silicone microparticles functionalized with similar, tethered, thermally responsive polypeptides. When the two components are mixed together and subjected to a mild thermal trigger, the thermally responsive moieties undergo a phase transition, causing the untethered (soluble) polypeptides to co-aggregate with the particle-bound polypeptides. The mixture is then diluted with warm buffer and injected into a microfluidic channel supporting a bulk acoustic standing wave. The biomarker-bearing particles migrate to the pressure antinodes, whereas blood cells migrate to the pressure node, leading to rapid separation with efficiencies exceeding 90% in a single pass. The biomarker-bearing particles can then be analyzed via flow cytometry, with a limit of detection of 0.75 nM for streptavidin spiked in blood plasma. Finally, by cooling the solution below the solubility temperature of the polypeptides, greater than 75% of the streptavidin is released from the microparticles, offering a unique approach for downstream analysis (e.g., sequencing or structural analysis). Overall, this methodology has promise for the detection, enrichment and analysis of some biomarkers from blood and other complex biological samples.

New method for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus spore separation using a microfluidic device based on manual temporary flow diversion

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are beneficial components often included in biofertilizers. Studies of the biology and utilization of these fungi are key to their successful use in the biofertilizer industry. The acquisition of isolated spores is a required step in these studies; however, spore quality control and spore separation are bottlenecks. Filtered and centrifuged spores have to be hand-picked under a microscope. The conventional procedure is skill-demanding, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. Here, we developed a microfluidic device to aid manual separation of spores from a filtered and centrifuged suspension. The device is a single spore streamer equipped with a manual temporary flow diversion (MTFD) mechanism to select single spores. Users can press a switch to generate MTFD when the spore arrives at the selection site. The targeted spore flows in a stream to the collection chamber via temporary cross flow. Using the device, spore purity, the percentage of spore numbers against the total number of particles counted in the collecting chamber reached 96.62% (median, n = 10) which is greater than the spore purity obtained from the conventional method (88.89% (median, n = 10)).

Detection of Rare Objects by Flow Cytometry: Imaging, Cell Sorting, and Deep Learning Approaches

Flow cytometry nowadays is among the main working instruments in modern biology paving the way for clinics to provide early, quick, and reliable diagnostics of many blood-related diseases. The major problem for clinical applications is the detection of rare pathogenic objects in patient blood. These objects can be circulating tumor cells, very rare during the early stages of cancer development, various microorganisms and parasites in the blood during acute blood infections. All of these rare diagnostic objects can be detected and identified very rapidly to save a patient's life. This review outlines the main techniques of visualization of rare objects in the blood flow, methods for extraction of such objects from the blood flow for further investigations and new approaches to identify the objects automatically with the modern deep learning methods.

The acoustofluidic focusing and separation of rare tumor cells using transparent lithium niobate transducers

Research on circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is of great significance in cancer diagnosis, prognosis and even the development of personalized therapy. Here, we present a simple and transparent acoustofluidic device for CTC separation in a label-free and non-invasive manner, instead of traditional acoustic devices based on silicon substrates, which are not only expensive, but also not conducive to optical visualization. The device is based on cheaper glass fabrication and integrated with a 36°Y-rotated cut lithium niobate single crystal (36° LNO) coated indium tin oxide (ITO) acoustic actuator instead of piezoceramics. It could greatly reduce the generation of heat when the signal is excited by utilizing the thickness vibration mode of the 36° LNO single crystal material because of its super-linear performance. Moreover, pre-aligning the particles in the sample inlet in a two-dimensional (2D) mode served to improve the separation efficiency of the device. It was proved that the separation efficiency of polystyrene particles was 97.1 ± 1.0%. The average separation efficiency of cancer cell lines (MCF7 and HeLa) mixed with white bloods cells was about 91.5 ± 4.5%. Owing to the excellent light transmittance of this acoustofluidic device, it has great potential for application to related optical techniques for cell detection while simultaneously separating cells relying on an acoustic field.

Aptamer Affinity-Bead Mediated Capture and Displacement of Gram-Negative Bacteria Using Acoustophoresis

Here, we report a simple and effective method for capturing and displacement of gram-negative bacteria using aptamer-modified microbeads and acoustophoresis. As acoustophoresis allows for simultaneous washing and size-dependent separation in continuous flow mode, we efficiently obtained gram-negative bacteria that showed high affinity without any additional washing steps. The proposed device has a simple and efficient channel design, utilizing a long, square-shaped microchannel that shows excellent separation performance in terms of the purity, recovery, and concentration factor. Microbeads (10 µm) coated with the GN6 aptamer can specifically bind gram-negative bacteria. After incubation of bacteria culture sample with aptamer affinity bead, gram-negative bacteria-bound microbeads, and other unbound/contaminants can be separated by size with high purity and recovery. The device demonstrated excellent separation performance, with high recovery (up to 98%), high purity (up to 99%), and a high-volume rate (500 µL/min). The acoustophoretic separation performances were conducted using 5 Gram-negative bacteria and 5 Gram-positive bacteria. Thanks to GN6 aptamer’s binding affinity, aptamer affinity bead also showed binding affinity to multiple strains of gram-negative bacteria, but not to gram-positive bacteria. GN6 coated bead can capture Gram-negative bacteria but not Gram-positive bacteria. This study may present a different perspective in the field of early diagnosis in bacterial infectious diseases. In addition to detecting living bacteria or bacteria-derived biomarkers, this protocol can be extended to monitoring the contamination of water resources and may aid quick responses to bioterrorism and pathogenic bacterial infections.

Contactless, programmable acoustofluidic manipulation of objects on water

Contact-free manipulation of small objects (e.g., cells, tissues, and droplets) using acoustic waves eliminates physical contact with structures and undesired surface adsorption. Pioneering acoustic-based, contact-free manipulation techniques (e.g., acoustic levitation) enable programmable manipulation but are limited by evaporation, bulky transducers, and inefficient acoustic coupling in air. Herein, we report an acoustofluidic mechanism for the contactless manipulation of small objects on water. A hollow-square-shaped interdigital transducer (IDT) is fabricated on lithium niobate (LiNbO3), immersed in water and used as a sound source to generate acoustic waves and as a micropump to pump fluid in the ±x and ±y orthogonal directions. As a result, objects which float adjacent to the excited IDT can be pushed unidirectionally (horizontally) in ±x and ±y following the directed acoustic wave propagation. A fluidic processor was developed by patterning IDT units in a 6-by-6 array. We demonstrate contactless, programmable manipulation on water of oil droplets and zebrafish larvae. This acoustofluidic-based manipulation opens avenues for the contactless, programmable processing of materials and small biosamples.

Acoustofluidic Synthesis of Particulate Nanomaterials

Synthesis of nanoparticles and particulate nanomaterials with tailored properties is a central step toward many applications ranging from energy conversion and imaging/display to biosensing and nanomedicine. While existing microfluidics-based synthesis methods offer precise control over the synthesis process, most of them rely on passive, partial mixing of reagents, which limits their applicability and potentially, adversely alter the properties of synthesized products. Here, an acoustofluidic (i.e., the fusion of acoustic and microfluidics) synthesis platform is reported to synthesize nanoparticles and nanomaterials in a controllable, reproducible manner through acoustic-streaming-based active mixing of reagents. The acoustofluidic strategy allows for the dynamic control of the reaction conditions simply by adjusting the strength of the acoustic streaming. With this platform, the synthesis of versatile nanoparticles/nanomaterials is demonstrated including the synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles, chitosan nanoparticles, organic-inorganic hybrid nanomaterials, metal-organic framework biocomposites, and lipid-DNA complexes. The acoustofluidic synthesis platform, when incorporated with varying flow rates, compositions, or concentrations of reagents, will lend itself unprecedented flexibility in establishing various reaction conditions and thus enable the synthesis of versatile nanoparticles and nanomaterials with prescribed properties.

Encapsulation and controlled release of retinol from silicone particles for topical delivery

Retinol, a derivative of vitamin A, is a ubiquitous compound used to treat acne, reduce wrinkles and protect against conditions like psoriasis and ichthyosis. While retinol is used as the primary active ingredient (AI) in many skin care formulations, its efficacy is often limited by an extreme sensitivity to degrade and toxicity at high concentrations. While microencapsulation is an appealing method to help overcome these issues, few microencapsulation strategies have made a major translational impact due to challenges with complexity, cost, limited protection of the AI and poor control of the release of the AI. We have developed a class of silicone particles that addresses these challenges for the encapsulation, protection and controlled release of retinol and other hydrophobic compounds. The particles are prepared by the sol-gel polymerization of silane monomers, which enables their rapid and facile synthesis at scale while maintaining a narrow size distribution (i.e., CV < 20%). We show that our particles can: (i) encapsulate retinol with high efficiency (>85%), (ii) protect retinol from degradation (yielding a half-life 9× greater than unencapsulated retinol) and (iii) slowly release retinol over several hours (at rates from 0.14 to 0.67 μg cm^-2 s^-1/2). To demonstrate that the controlled release of retinol from the particles can reduce irritation, we performed a double blind study on human subjects and found that formulations containing our particles were 12-23% less irritating than identical formulations containing Microsponge® particles (an industry standard by Amcol, Inc.). To show that the silicone particles can elicit a favorable biological response, similar to the Microsponge® particles, we applied both formulations to reconstructed human epidermal tissues and found an upregulation of keratin 19 (K19) and a downregulation of K10, indicating that the reduced irritation observed in the human study was not caused by reduced activity. We also found a decrease in the production of interleukin-1α (IL-1α) compared to formulations containing the Microsponge particles, suggesting lower irritation levels and supporting the findings from the human study. Finally, we show that the silicone particles can encapsulate other AIs, including betamethasone, N, N-diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET), homosalate and ingenol mebutate, establishing these particles as a true platform technology.

Dielectrophoresis-based microfluidic platforms for cancer diagnostics

The recent advancement of dielectrophoresis (DEP)-enabled microfluidic platforms is opening new opportunities for potential use in cancer disease diagnostics. DEP is advantageous because of its specificity, low cost, small sample volume requirement, and tuneable property for microfluidic platforms. These intrinsic advantages have made it especially suitable for developing microfluidic cancer diagnostic platforms. This review focuses on a comprehensive analysis of the recent developments of DEP enabled microfluidic platforms sorted according to the target cancer cell. Each study is critically analyzed, and the features of each platform, the performance, added functionality for clinical use, and the types of samples, used are discussed. We address the novelty of the techniques, strategies, and design configuration used in improving on existing technologies or previous studies. A summary of comparing the developmental extent of each study is made, and we conclude with a treatment of future trends and a brief summary.

Reducing WBC background in cancer cell separation products by negative acoustic contrast particle immuno-acoustophoresis

Cancer cells display acoustic properties enabling acoustophoretic separation from white blood cells (WBCs) with 2-3 log suppression of the WBC background. However, a subset of WBCs has overlapping acoustic properties with cancer cells, which is why label-free acoustophoretic cancer cell isolation needs additional purification prior to analysis. This paper reports for the first time a proof of concept for continuous flow acoustophoretic negative selection of WBCs from cancer cells using negative acoustic contrast elastomeric particles (EPs) activated with CD45-antibodies that specifically bind to WBCs. The EP/WBC complexes align at the acoustic pressure anti-nodes along the channel walls while unbound cancer cells focus to the pressure node in the channel center, enabling continuous flow based depletion of WBC background in a cancer cell product. The method does not provide a single process solution for the CTC separation challenge, but provides an elegant part to a multi-step process by further reducing the WBC background in cancer cell separation products derived from an initial step of label-free acoustophoresis. We report the recorded performance of the negative selection immuno-acoustophoretic WBC depletion and cancer cell recovery. To eliminate the negative impact of the separation due to the known problems of aggregation of negative acoustic contrast particles along the sidewalls of the acoustophoresis channel and to enable continuous separation of EP/WBC complexes from cancer cells, a new acoustic actuation method has been implemented where the ultrasound frequency is scanned (1.991MHz ± 100 kHz, scan rate 200 kHz ms^-1). Using this frequency scanning strategy EP/WBC complexes were acoustophoretically separated from mixtures of WBCs spiked with breast and prostate cancer cells (DU145 and MCF-7). An 86-fold (MCF-7) and 52-fold (DU145) reduction of WBCs in the cancer cell fractions were recorded with separation efficiencies of 98.6% (MCF-7) and 99.7% (DU145) and cancer cell recoveries of 89.8% (MCF-7) and 85.0% (DU145).

MicroBubble activated acoustic cell sorting

Acoustophoresis, the ability to acoustically manipulate particles and cells inside a microfluidic channel, is a critical enabling technology for cell-sorting applications. However, one of the major impediments for routine use of acoustophoresis at clinical laboratory has been the reliance on the inherent physical properties of cells for separation. Here, we present a microfluidic-based microBubble-Activated Acoustic Cell Sorting (BAACS) method that rely on the specific binding of target cells to microbubbles conjugated with specific antibodies on their surface for continuous cell separation using ultrasonic standing wave. In acoustophoresis, cells being positive acoustic contrast particles migrate to pressure nodes. On the contrary, air-filled polymer-shelled microbubbles being strong negative acoustic contrast particles migrate to pressure antinodes and can be used to selectively migrate target cells. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate the separation of cancer cell line in a suspension with better than 75% efficiency. Moreover, 100% of the microbubble-cell conjugates migrated to the anti-node. Hence a better upstream affinity-capture has the potential to provide higher sorting efficiency. The BAACS technique expands the acoustic cell manipulation possibilities and offers cell-sorting solutions suited for applications at point of care.

Thermo-acoustofluidic separation of vesicles based on cholesterol content

Biomechanical properties of cells such as cellular stiffness have been increasingly considered as biomarkers for diseases. For instance, stiffness of cancer cells has been correlated to the malignant potential in certain cell lines. In cells, the cholesterol content plays a crucial role in determining stiffness. Changes in the cholesterol content in cellular membranes can be an indication of pathological disorders. Acoustophoresis as a separation and diagnostic tool is well positioned to help in the separation and diagnosis of cells taking advantage of its unique separation criteria of density and compressibility. However, under the same conditions, cells and vesicles secreted by these cells often have a positive contrast factor sign and thus do not yield simple separations. Thermally-assisted acoustophoresis, also referred to as thermo-acoustophoresis, solves this problem by adding a temperature dimension to the separation. In this work, we evaluate the acoustic contrast temperature (T_Φ) of vesicles at different cholesterol molar ratios (X_chol) and develop a multi-stage lab-on-a-chip method to accomplish for the first time the separation of a three-vesicle mixture. Using X_chol = 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 vesicles, we have obtained separation efficiencies exceeding 93%. The simplicity, rapidity, and label-free nature of this approach holds promise as a diagnostic and separation tool for cells and extracellular vesicles such as exosomes and microvesicles.

Self-Aligned Interdigitated Transducers for Acoustofluidics

The surface acoustic wave (SAW) is effective for the manipulation of fluids and particles at microscale. The current approach of integrating interdigitated transducers (IDTs) for SAW generation into microfluidic channels involves complex and laborious microfabrication steps. These steps often require full access to clean room facilities and hours to align the transducers to the precise location. This work presents an affordable and innovative method for fabricating SAW-based microfluidic devices without the need for clean room facilities and alignment. The IDTs and microfluidic channels are fabricated using the same process and thus are precisely self-aligned in accordance with the device design. With the use of the developed fabrication approach, a few types of different SAW-based microfluidic devices have been fabricated and demonstrated for particle separation and active droplet generation.

Magnetically Responsive Negative Acoustic Contrast Microparticles for Bioanalytical Applications

Smart colloidal particles are routinely used as carriers for biological molecules, fluorescent reporters, cells, and other analytes for the purposes of sample preparation and detection. However, such particles are typically engineered to respond to a single type of stimulus (e.g., commercial magnetic beads to magnetic fields). Here, we demonstrate a unique class of particles that display both positive magnetic contrast and negative acoustic contrast in water. This dual functionality allows for fine spatiotemporal control, enabling multiple separation modalities and increasing the utility of the particles in various chemical and biological assays.

Magnetic separation of acoustically focused cancer cells from blood for magnetographic templating and analysis

Liquid biopsies hold enormous promise for the next generation of medical diagnoses. At the forefront of this effort, many are seeking to capture, enumerate and analyze circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as a means to prognosticate and develop individualized treatments for cancer. Capturing these rare cells, however, represents a major engineering challenge due to their low abundance, morphology and heterogeneity. A variety of microfluidic tools have been developed to isolate CTCs from drawn blood samples; however, few of these approaches offer a means to separate and analyze cells in an integrated system. We have developed a microfluidic platform comprised of three modules that offers high throughput separation of cancer cells from blood and on-chip organization of those cells for streamlined analyses. The first module uses an acoustic standing wave to rapidly align cells in a contact-free manner. The second module then separates magnetically labeled cells from unlabeled cells, offering purities exceeding 85% for cells and 90% for binary mixtures of synthetic particles. Finally, the third module contains a spatially periodic array of microwells with underlying micromagnets to capture individual cells for on-chip analyses (e.g., staining, imaging and quantification). This array is capable of capturing with accuracies exceeding 80% for magnetically labeled cells and 95% for magnetic particles. Overall, by virtue of its holistic processing of complex biological samples, this system has promise for the isolation and evaluation of rare cancer cells and can be readily extended to address a variety of applications across single cell biology and immunology.

Thermally-assisted ultrasonic separation of giant vesicles

We report on a newly-developed membrane stiffness-based separation of vesicles using a thermally-assisted acoustophoretic approach. By tuning the temperature, we achieved the separation of vesicles of the same size, shape, and charge but with different stiffness values. It was observed that at a specific transition point, the acoustic contrast factor of vesicles changed sign from positive to negative. This change was mainly due to the change in the acoustic compressibility of the vesicles, which is inversely proportional to stiffness. The acoustic contrast temperature, corresponding to the temperature at which the acoustic contrast factor switches sign, was determined to be unique to the composition of the vesicles. This unique temperature signature allowed us to develop a separation method of vesicles with distinct membrane stiffness with target outlet purities exceeding 95%. Our studies suggest that this method may be applied for the separation of cells affected by diseases that affect the cellular stiffness.

Investigation of polymer-shelled microbubble motions in acoustophoresis

The objective of this paper is to explore the trajectory motion of microsize (typically smaller than a red blood cell) encapsulated polymer-shelled gas bubbles propelled by radiation force in an acoustic standing-wave field and to compare the corresponding movements of solid polymer microbeads. The experimental setup consists of a microfluidic chip coupled to a piezoelectric crystal (PZT) with a resonance frequency of about 2.8MHz. The microfluidic channel consists of a rectangular chamber with a width, w, corresponding to one wavelength of the ultrasound standing wave. It creates one full wave ultrasound of a standing-wave pattern with two pressure nodes at w/4 and 3w/4 and three antinodes at 0, w/2, and w. The peak-to-peak amplitude of the electrical potential over the PZT was varied between 1 and 10V. The study is limited to no-flow condition. From Gor'kov's potential equation, the acoustic contrast factor, Φ, for the polymer-shelled microbubbles was calculated to about -60.7. Experimental results demonstrate that the polymer-shelled microbubbles are translated and accumulated at the pressure antinode planes. This trajectory motion of polymer-shelled microbubbles toward the pressure antinode plane is similar to what has been described for other acoustic contrast particles with a negative Φ. First, primary radiation forces dragged the polymer-shelled microbubbles into proximity with each other at the pressure antinode planes. Then, primary and secondary radiation forces caused them to quickly aggregate at different spots along the channel. The relocation time for polymer-shelled microbubbles was 40 times shorter than that for polymer microbeads, and in contrast to polymer microbeads, the polymer-shelled microbubbles were actuated even at driving voltages (proportional to radiation forces) as low as 1V. In short, the polymer-shelled microbubbles demonstrate the behavior attributed to the negative acoustic contrast factor particles and thus can be trapped at the antinode plane and thereby separated from particles having a positive acoustic contrast factor, such as for example solid particles and cells. This phenomenon could be utilized in exploring future applications, such as bioassay, bioaffinity, and cell interaction studies in vitro in a well-controlled environment.

Translating microfluidics: Cell separation technologies and their barriers to commercialization

Advances in microfluidic cell sorting have revolutionized the ways in which cell-containing fluids are processed, now providing performances comparable to, or exceeding, traditional systems, but in a vastly miniaturized format. These technologies exploit a wide variety of physical phenomena to manipulate cells and fluid flow, such as magnetic traps, sound waves and flow-altering micropatterns, and they can evaluate single cells by immobilizing them onto surfaces for chemotherapeutic assessment, encapsulate cells into picoliter droplets for toxicity screenings and examine the interactions between pairs of cells in response to new, experimental drugs. However, despite the massive surge of innovation in these high-performance lab-on-a-chip devices, few have undergone successful commercialization, and no device has been translated to a widely distributed clinical commodity to date. Persistent challenges such as an increasingly saturated patent landscape as well as complex user interfaces are among several factors that may contribute to their slowed progress. In this article, we identify several of the leading microfluidic technologies for sorting cells that are poised for clinical translation; we examine the principal barriers preventing their routine clinical use; finally, we provide a prospectus to elucidate the key criteria that must be met to overcome those barriers. Once established, these tools may soon transform how clinical labs study various ailments and diseases by separating cells for downstream sequencing and enabling other forms of advanced cellular or sub-cellular analysis. © 2016 International Clinical Cytometry Society.

Iso-acoustic focusing of cells for size-insensitive acousto-mechanical phenotyping

Mechanical phenotyping of single cells is an emerging tool for cell classification, enabling assessment of effective parameters relating to cells' interior molecular content and structure. Here, we present iso-acoustic focusing, an equilibrium method to analyze the effective acoustic impedance of single cells in continuous flow. While flowing through a microchannel, cells migrate sideways, influenced by an acoustic field, into streams of increasing acoustic impedance, until reaching their cell-type specific point of zero acoustic contrast. We establish an experimental procedure and provide theoretical justifications and models for iso-acoustic focusing. We describe a method for providing a suitable acoustic contrast gradient in a cell-friendly medium, and use acoustic forces to maintain that gradient in the presence of destabilizing forces. Applying this method we demonstrate iso-acoustic focusing of cell lines and leukocytes, showing that acoustic properties provide phenotypic information independent of size.

Acoustophoresis, a method to manipulate individual cells based on their acoustic properties is confounded by a strong dependency on cell size. Here the authors present iso-acoustic focussing, a way to separate cells in a microfluidic chamber according to their effective acoustic impedance, independent of their size.

Experimental verification of theoretical equations for acoustic radiation force on compressible spherical particles in traveling waves

Acoustophoresis uses acoustic radiation force to remotely manipulate particles suspended in a host fluid for many scientific, technological, and medical applications, such as acoustic levitation, acoustic coagulation, contrast ultrasound imaging, ultrasound-assisted drug delivery, etc. To estimate the magnitude of acoustic radiation forces, equations derived for an inviscid host fluid are commonly used. However, there are theoretical predictions that, in the case of a traveling wave, viscous effects can dramatically change the magnitude of acoustic radiation forces, which make the equations obtained for an inviscid host fluid invalid for proper estimation of acoustic radiation forces. To date, experimental verification of these predictions has not been published. Experimental measurements of viscous effects on acoustic radiation forces in a traveling wave were conducted using a confocal optical and acoustic system and values were compared with available theories. Our results show that, even in a low-viscosity fluid such as water, the magnitude of acoustic radiation forces is increased manyfold by viscous effects in comparison with what follows from the equations derived for an inviscid fluid.

Fabrication and Operation of Acoustofluidic Devices Supporting Bulk Acoustic Standing Waves for Sheathless Focusing of Particles

Acoustophoresis refers to the displacement of suspended objects in response to directional forces from sound energy. Given that the suspended objects must be smaller than the incident wavelength of sound and the width of the fluidic channels are typically tens to hundreds of micrometers across, acoustofluidic devices typically use ultrasonic waves generated from a piezoelectric transducer pulsating at high frequencies (in the megahertz range). At characteristic frequencies that depend on the geometry of the device, it is possible to induce the formation of standing waves that can focus particles along desired fluidic streamlines within a bulk flow. Here, we describe a method for the fabrication of acoustophoretic devices from common materials and clean room equipment. We show representative results for the focusing of particles with positive or negative acoustic contrast factors, which move towards the pressure nodes or antinodes of the standing waves, respectively. These devices offer enormous practical utility for precisely positioning large numbers of microscopic entities (e.g., cells) in stationary or flowing fluids for applications ranging from cytometry to assembly.

Highly parallel acoustic assembly of microparticles into well-ordered colloidal crystallites

The precise arrangement of microscopic objects is critical to the development of functional materials and ornately patterned surfaces. Here, we present an acoustics-based method for the rapid arrangement of microscopic particles into organized and programmable architectures, which are periodically spaced within a square assembly chamber. This macroscale device employs two-dimensional bulk acoustic standing waves to propel particles along the base of the chamber toward pressure nodes or antinodes, depending on the acoustic contrast factor of the particle, and is capable of simultaneously creating thousands of size-limited, isotropic and anisotropic assemblies within minutes. We pair experiments with Brownian dynamics simulations to model the migration kinetics and assembly patterns of spherical microparticles. We use these insights to predict and subsequently validate the onset of buckling of the assemblies into three-dimensional clusters by experiments upon increasing the acoustic pressure amplitude and the particle concentration. The simulations are also used to inform our experiments for the assembly of non-spherical particles, which are then recovered via fluid evaporation and directly inspected by electron microscopy. This method for assembly of particles offers several notable advantages over other approaches (e.g., magnetics, electrokinetics and optical tweezing) including simplicity, speed and scalability and can also be used in concert with other such approaches for enhancing the types of assemblies achievable.

Active bioparticle manipulation in microfluidic systems

The motion of bioparticles in a microfluidic environment can be actively controlled using several tuneable mechanisms, including hydrodynamic, electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis, magnetophoresis, acoustophoresis, thermophoresis and optical forces.

Forces acting on a small particle in an acoustical field in a thermoviscous fluid

We present a theoretical analysis of the acoustic radiation force on a single small spherical particle, either a thermoviscous fluid droplet or a thermoelastic solid particle, suspended in a viscous and heat-conducting fluid medium. Within the perturbation assumptions, our analysis places no restrictions on the length scales of the viscous and thermal boundary-layer thicknesses δ(s) and δ(t) relative to the particle radius a, but it assumes the particle to be small in comparison to the acoustic wavelength λ. This is the limit relevant to scattering of ultrasound waves from nanometer- and micrometer-sized particles. For particles of size comparable to or smaller than the boundary layers, the thermoviscous theory leads to profound consequences for the acoustic radiation force. Not only do we predict forces orders of magnitude larger than expected from ideal-fluid theory, but for certain relevant choices of materials, we also find a sign change in the acoustic radiation force on different-sized but otherwise identical particles. These findings lead to the concept of a particle-size-dependent acoustophoretic contrast factor, highly relevant to acoustic separation of microparticles in gases, as well as to handling of nanoparticles in lab-on-a-chip systems.

Microfluidic cell sorting: a review of the advances in the separation of cells from debulking to rare cell isolation

Accurate and high throughput cell sorting is a critical enabling technology in molecular and cellular biology, biotechnology, and medicine. While conventional methods can provide high efficiency sorting in short timescales, advances in microfluidics have enabled the realization of miniaturized devices offering similar capabilities that exploit a variety of physical principles. We classify these technologies as either active or passive. Active systems generally use external fields (e.g., acoustic, electric, magnetic, and optical) to impose forces to displace cells for sorting, whereas passive systems use inertial forces, filters, and adhesion mechanisms to purify cell populations. Cell sorting on microchips provides numerous advantages over conventional methods by reducing the size of necessary equipment, eliminating potentially biohazardous aerosols, and simplifying the complex protocols commonly associated with cell sorting. Additionally, microchip devices are well suited for parallelization, enabling complete lab-on-a-chip devices for cellular isolation, analysis, and experimental processing. In this review, we examine the breadth of microfluidic cell sorting technologies, while focusing on those that offer the greatest potential for translation into clinical and industrial practice and that offer multiple, useful functions. We organize these sorting technologies by the type of cell preparation required (i.e., fluorescent label-based sorting, bead-based sorting, and label-free sorting) as well as by the physical principles underlying each sorting mechanism.

Two-dimensional spatial manipulation of microparticles in continuous flows in acoustofluidic systems

We report a modeling and experimental study of techniques to acoustically focus particles flowing through a microfluidic channel. Our theoretical model differs from prior works in that we solve an approximate 2-D wave transmission model that accounts for wave propagation in both the solid and fluid phases. Our simulations indicate that particles can be effectively focused at driving frequencies as high as 10% off of the resonant condition. This conclusion is supported by experiments on the acoustic focusing of particles in nearly square microchannels, which are studied for different flow rates, driving frequencies and placements of the lead zirconate titanate transducer, either underneath the microchannel or underneath a parallel trough. The relative acoustic potential energy and the resultant velocity fields for particles with positive acoustic contrast coefficients are estimated in the 2-D limit. Confocal microscopy was used to observe the spatial distribution of the flowing microparticles in three dimensions. Through these studies, we show that a single driving frequency from a single piezoelectric actuator can induce the 2-D concentration of particles in a microchannel with a nearly square cross section, and we correlate these behaviors with theoretical predictions. We also show that it is possible to control the extent of focusing of the microparticles, and that it is possible to decouple the focusing of microparticles in the vertical direction from the lateral direction in rectangular channels with anisotropic cross sections. This study provides guidelines to design and operate microchip-based acoustofluidic devices for precise control over the spatial arrangement of microparticles for applications such as flow cytometry and cellular sorting.

Magnetographic array for the capture and enumeration of single cells and cell pairs

We present a simple microchip device consisting of an overlaid pattern of micromagnets and microwells capable of capturing magnetically labeled cells into well-defined compartments (with accuracies >95%). Its flexible design permits the programmable deposition of single cells for their direct enumeration and pairs of cells for the detailed analysis of cell-cell interactions. This cell arraying device requires no external power and can be operated solely with permanent magnets. Large scale image analysis of cells captured in this array can yield valuable information (e.g., regarding various immune parameters such as the CD4:CD8 ratio) in a miniaturized and portable platform.

Nucleation and growth synthesis of siloxane gels to form functional, monodisperse, and acoustically programmable particles

Nucleation and growth methods offer scalable means of synthesizing colloidal particles with precisely specified size for applications in chemical research, industry, and medicine. These methods have been used to prepare a class of silicone gel particles that display a range of programmable properties and narrow size distributions. The acoustic contrast factor of these particles in water is estimated and can be tuned such that the particles undergo acoustophoresis to either the pressure nodes or antinodes of acoustic standing waves. These particles can be synthesized to display surface functional groups that can be covalently modified for a range of bioanalytical and acoustophoretic sorting applications.