Communications of the ACM
Acoustic Cell-Sorting Chip May Lead to Cell Phone-Sized Medical Labs
Slightly larger than a dime, this cell-sorting device uses two sound beams to act as acoustic tweezers.
Credit: Pennsylvania State University
Researchers have created a device that uses acoustic waves to sort a continuous flow of cells on a chip, and they believe it could lead to more efficient and less expensive analytic devices.
According to Pennsylvania State University professor Tony Jun Huang, the device uses two beams of sound to act as acoustic tweezers. The paths of the cells can be easily altered by changing the frequency of the acoustic waves.
Huang notes the device can sort cells into five or more channels, which enables it to simultaneously analyze more cell types. He believes medical analysis devices could shrink to the size of a cell phone, and that biological, genetic, and medical labs would be able to use them for various types of analysis, including blood and genetic testing.
"Today, cell sorting is done on bulky and very expensive devices," Huang says. "We want to minimize them so they are portable, inexpensive and can be powered by batteries."
The acoustic wave cell-sorting chip was created using polydimethylsiloxane, while Huang says two parallel transducers placed at the sides of the chip form pressure nodes as the acoustic waves interfere with each other and channel the cells crossing the chip toward the nodes.
From Penn State Live
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