Development and characterisation of acoustofluidic devices using detachable electrodes made from PCB

• Published in: Lab on a chip Vol. 2; no. 1; pp. 187 - 1814
• Main Authors: Mikhaylov, Roman, Wu, Fangda, Wang, Hanlin, Clayton, Aled, Sun, Chao, Xie, Zhihua, Liang, Dongfang, Dong, Yinhua, Yuan, Fan, Moschou, Despina, Wu, Zhenlin, Shen, Ming Hong, Yang, Jian, Fu, Yongqing, Yang, Zhiyong, Burton, Christian, Errington, Rachel J, Wiltshire, Marie, Yang, Xin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Royal Society of Chemistry 19.05.2020
• Subjects: Acoustics; Circuit boards; Electrodes; Microchannels; Microparticles; Patterning; Photolithography; Piezoelectricity; Printed circuits; Substrates; Surface acoustic waves
• ISSN: 1473-0197; 1473-0189
• DOI: 10.1039/c9lc01192g

Acoustofluidics has been increasingly applied in biology, medicine and chemistry due to its versatility in manipulating fluids, cells and nano-/micro-particles. In this paper, we develop a novel and simple technology to fabricate a surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based acoustofluidic device by clamping electrodes made using a printed circuit board (PCB) with a piezoelectric substrate. The PCB-based SAW (PCB-SAW) device is systematically characterised and benchmarked with a SAW device made using the conventional photolithography process with the same specifications. Microparticle manipulations such as streaming in droplets and patterning in microchannels were demonstrated in the PCB-SAW device. In addition, the PCB-SAW device was applied as an acoustic tweezer to pattern lung cancer cells to form three or four traces inside the microchannel in a controllable manner. Cell viability of ∼97% was achieved after acoustic manipulation using the PCB-SAW device, which proved its ability as a suitable tool for acoustophoretic applications. We demonstrate a novel SAW device fabrication technique by mechanically clamping interdigital electrodes (IDEs) on the printed circuit board (PCB) to a LiNbO 3 wafer. The novel PCB-SAW device is capable of performing all the functions of standard SAW devices.