Acoustophoretic patterning of microparticles in a microfluidic chamber driven by standing Lamb waves
Jin-Chen Hsu, Chih-Lei Chao
Abstract
The contactless manipulation of microparticles and cells by using acoustic forces is important in many applications. However, multi-band acoustophoresis has been rarely investigated in the literature. In this Letter, we propose a microscale acoustofluidic system that has multiple orders of available Lamb modes for the acoustic trapping of microparticles at various frequencies. In our device, standing Lamb waves (SLWs) of specific orders can be selectively excited in a 300-μm-thick piezoelectric lithium-niobate (LiNbO3) crystal plate by a pair of interdigitated transducers (IDTs) at the corresponding frequency. We demonstrate the acoustophoretic trapping and patterning of 7-μm particles in a single acoustofluidic device with multiple available actuating frequencies. The approach to the proposed design and the working mechanisms are explained by using thin plate and a full-wave models that solve the dispersion relations and coupling fields of the piezoelectric SLW acoustofluidic system, respectively. Furthermore, we experimentally show that the stable and tight trapping of particles in the chamber can be achieved independently along two mutually orthogonal directions. This provides the essential ground for planar manipulations of microparticles and cells based on the proposed device. The results here can trigger more innovative designs and applications of acoustofluidic devices for microparticle manipulation and microfluidic mixing, with multi-frequency channels and a wide span of different actuating frequencies in one system.