Acoustic Tweezers: A Versatile, Low-Power Tool for Drug Screening and Tissue Engineering

acoustic tweezers (Photo Credit: Tony Huang, Penn State)

A new and simple method for manipulating small objects, including living cells, without damage has been developed by a team led by Tony Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State. Called acoustic tweezers, these tiny devices small enough to fit on a computer chip use sound waves to push small objects into “troughs,” created when two sound waves of the same frequency cancel each other out. These acoustic tweezers are capable of pushing large numbers of cells or nanoparticles into precise locations simultaneously to form patterns that could be useful for biological applications, such as placing stem cells on a grid for testing or growing new tissues.

Acoustic tweezers are made by building sound producing transducers onto a piezoelectric chip. The tweezers require very little power to operate, which is not the case with other devices, such as optical tweezers. Huang believes his versatile new device will have applications not only in biology, but also in physics, chemistry, and materials science.

Their experiments manipulating single cell E. coli bacteria, 1.9 micrometer polystyrene beads, and cow red blood cells was reported in the journal Lab on a Chip.

In addition to Huang, the authors were Jinjie Shi, Daniel Ahmed and Sz-Chin Steven Lin, graduate students, engineering science and mechanics; Xiaole Mao, graduate student in bioengineering, and Aitan Lawit, undergraduate in engineering science and mechanics. The work is supported by the National Science Foundation. Source: Penn State Live

To learn more visit: http://live.psu.edu/story/41191

This research brief was featured in the brochure Biomedical Materials.