| 1. |
- Fornell, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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An acoustofluidic platform for non-contact trapping of cell-laden hydrogel droplets compatible with optical microscopy
- 2019
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Ingår i: Biomicrofluidics. - : AIP Publishing. - 1932-1058. ; 13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Production of cell-laden hydrogel droplets as miniaturized niches for 3D cell culture provides a new route for cell-based assays. Such production can be enabled by droplet microfluidics and here we present a droplet trapping system based on bulk acoustic waves for handling hydrogel droplets in a continuous flow format. The droplet trapping system consists of a glass capillary equipped with a small piezoelectric transducer. By applying ultrasound (4 MHz), a localized acoustic standing wave field is generated in the capillary, trapping the droplets in a well-defined cluster above the transducer area. The results show that the droplet cluster can be retained at flow rates of up to 76 mu l/min, corresponding to an average flow speed of 3.2 mm/s. The system allows for important operations such as continuous perfusion and/or addition of chemical reagents to the encapsulated cells with in situ optical access. This feature is demonstrated by performing on-chip staining of the cell nuclei. The key advantages of this trapping method are that it is label-free and gentle and thus well-suited for biological applications. Moreover, the droplets can easily be released on-demand, which facilitates downstream analysis. It is envisioned that the presented droplet trapping system will be a valuable tool for a wide range of multistep assays as well as long-term monitoring of cells encapsulated in gel-based droplets.
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| 2. |
- Fornell, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Controlled Lateral Positioning of Microparticles Inside Droplets Using Acoustophoresis
- 2015
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Ingår i: Analytical Chemistry. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0003-2700 .- 1520-6882. ; 87:20, s. 10521-10526
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we utilize bulk acoustic waves to control the position of micropartides inside droplets in two-phase microfluidic systems and demonstrate a method to enrich the micropartides. In droplet microfluidics, different unit operations are combined and integrated on-chip to miniaturize complex biochemical assays. We present a droplet unit operation capable of controlling the position of micropartides during a trident shaped droplet split. An acoustic standing wave field is generated in the microchannel, and the acoustic forces direct the encapsulated micropartides to the center of the droplets. The method is generic, requires no labeling of the micropartides, and is operated in a noncontact fashion. It was possible to achieve 2+-fold enrichment of polystyrene beads (5 mu m in diameter) in the center daughter droplet with an average recovery of 89% of the beads. Red blood cells were also successfully manipulated inside droplets. These results show the possibility to use acoustophoresis in two-phase systems to enrich micropartides and open up the possibility for new droplet-based assays that are not performed today.
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