State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
Soft Matter. 2021 Mar 21;17(11):3010-3021. doi: 10.1039/d0sm02193h. Epub 2021 Mar 12.
The pace of change in chemical and biological research enabled by improved detection systems demands fundamental liquid handling and sample preparation changes. The acoustic droplet ejection (ADE)-based liquid handling method has the advantages of improving precision and data reproducibility, reducing costs, hands-on time, and eliminating waste. ADE gradually replaced traditional aspiration-and-dispense liquid-handling robots in applications such as synthetic biology, genotyping, personalized medicine, and next-generation sequencing. This review emphatically introduces the setup of the ADE system and the critical technologies of each part, including acoustic droplet generation, optimized design of the source fluid wells, droplet coalescence, and power control. The advantages and disadvantages of these technologies are discussed, and the future development of acoustic droplet ejection technology is also predicted.
改进的检测系统使化学和生物研究的变化步伐加快，这就要求对基础液体处理和样品制备进行改变。基于声控液滴喷射（acoustic droplet ejection，ADE）的液体处理方法具有提高精度和数据重现性、降低成本、减少人力和消除浪费的优点。在合成生物学、基因分型、个性化医疗和下一代测序等应用中，ADE 逐渐取代了传统的吸液和分配式液体处理机器人。本文着重介绍了 ADE 系统的设置以及各个部分的关键技术，包括声控液滴的产生、源液井的优化设计、液滴聚结和功率控制。讨论了这些技术的优缺点，并对声控液滴喷射技术的未来发展进行了预测。
