Zhu Benpeng, Fei Chunlong, Wang Chen, Zhu Yuhang, Yang Xiaofei, Zheng Hairong, Zhou Qifa, Shung K Kirk
School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, China.
Department of Biomedical Engineering and NIH Transducer Resource Center, University of Southern California , Los Angeles, California 90089-1111, United States.
ACS Sens. 2017 Jan 27;2(1):172-177. doi: 10.1021/acssensors.6b00713. Epub 2017 Jan 11.
Precise cell positioning is indispensable in the fields of biophysics and cellular biology. Acoustic microbeam produced by a highly focused ultrasound transducer has recently been investigated for a particle or cell manipulation. By virtue of the relatively good piezoelectric property, Sc doped AlN film was introduced for a highly focused ultrasound transducer application. Using a sputtering approach, a self-focused AlScN film based device has been designed, fabricated, and characterized at a frequency of ∼230 MHz. It had a narrow lateral beam width (∼8.2 μm). The AlScN ultrasound transducer was not only shown to be capable of remote controlling a single 10 μm polystyrene microsphere in distilled water, but also demonstrated to possess the capability to manipulate without contact individual 10 μm epidermoid carcinoma cell in two dimensions within a range of hundreds of micrometers in phosphate buffered saline. Most importantly, the cell manipulation was realized in continuous mode and no switch-on and -off operation was needed. These results suggest that self-focused AlScN film ultrasound transducer is a promising candidate for biomedical and molecular biology applications.
精确的细胞定位在生物物理学和细胞生物学领域中不可或缺。最近，人们对由高聚焦超声换能器产生的声微束进行了研究，用于操纵粒子或细胞。凭借相对良好的压电性能，引入了Sc掺杂的AlN薄膜用于高聚焦超声换能器应用。采用溅射方法，设计、制造并表征了一种基于自聚焦AlScN薄膜的器件，其频率约为230 MHz。它具有较窄的横向束宽（约8.2μm）。AlScN超声换能器不仅能够在蒸馏水中远程控制单个10μm的聚苯乙烯微球，还证明了在磷酸盐缓冲盐水中能够在数百微米范围内对单个10μm的表皮样癌细胞进行二维非接触操纵。最重要的是，细胞操纵以连续模式实现，无需开关操作。这些结果表明，自聚焦AlScN薄膜超声换能器是生物医学和分子生物学应用的一个有前景的候选者。
