Precorrected-FFT Accelerated Singular Boundary Method for High-Frequency Acoustic Radiation and Scattering

This paper presents a precorrected-FFT (pFFT) accelerated singular boundary method (SBM) for acoustic radiation and scattering in the high-frequency regime. The SBM is a boundary-type collocation method, which is truly free of mesh and integration and easy to program. However, due to the expensive CPU time and memory requirement in solving a fully-populated interpolation matrix equation, this method is usually limited to low-frequency acoustic problems. A new pFFT scheme is introduced to overcome this drawback. Since the models with lots of collocation points can be calculated by the new pFFT accelerated SBM (pFFT-SBM), high-frequency acoustic problems can be simulated. The results of numerical examples show that the new pFFT-SBM possesses an obvious advantage for high-frequency acoustic problems.

The role of channel height and actuation method on particle manipulation in surface acoustic wave (SAW)-driven microfluidic devices

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) micromanipulation offers modularity, easy integration into microfluidic devices and a high degree of flexibility. A major challenge for acoustic manipulation, however, is the existence of a lower limit on the minimum particle size that can be manipulated. As particle size reduces, the drag force resulting from acoustic streaming dominates over acoustic radiation forces; reducing this threshold is key to manipulating smaller specimens. To address this, we investigate a novel excitation configuration based on diffractive-acoustic SAW (DASAW) actuation and demonstrate a reduction in the critical minimum particle size which can be manipulated. DASAW exploits the inherent diffractive effects arising from a limited transducer area in a microchannel, requiring only a travelling SAW (TSAW) to generate time-averaged pressure gradients. We show that these acoustic fields focus particles at the channel walls, and further compare this excitation mode with more typical standing SAW (SSAW) actuation. Compared to SSAW, DASAW reduces acoustic streaming effects whilst generating a comparable pressure field. The result of these factors is a critical particle size with DASAW (1 $$\upmu$$ μ m) that is significantly smaller than that for SSAW actuation (1.85 $$\upmu$$ μ m), for polystyrene particles and a given $$\lambda _{\text {SAW}}$$ λ SAW = 200 $$\upmu$$ μ m. We further find that streaming magnitude can be tuned in a DASAW system by changing the channel height, noting optimum channel heights for particle collection as a function of the fluid wavelength at which streaming velocities are minimised in both DASAW and SSAW devices.

Non-Cavitation Targeted Microbubble-Mediated Single-Cell Sonoporation

Sonoporation employs ultrasound accompanied by microbubble (MB) cavitation to induce the reversible disruption of cell membranes and has been exploited as a promising intracellular macromolecular delivery strategy. Due to the damage to cells resulting from strong cavitation, it is difficult to balance efficient delivery and high survival rates. In this paper, a traveling surface acoustic wave (TSAW) device, consisting of a TSAW chip and a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channel, was designed to explore single-cell sonoporation using targeted microbubbles (TMBs) in a non-cavitation regime. A TSAW was applied to precisely manipulate the movement of the TMBs attached to MDA-MB-231 cells, leading to sonoporation at a single-cell level. The impact of input voltage and the number of TMBs on cell sonoporation was investigated. In addition, the physical mechanisms of bubble cavitation or the acoustic radiation force (ARF) for cell sonoporation were analyzed. The TMBs excited by an ARF directly propelled cell membrane deformation, leading to reversible perforation in the cell membrane. When two TMBs adhered to the cell surface and the input voltage was 350 mVpp, the cell sonoporation efficiency went up to 83%.