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Production of cell-laden hydrogel droplets as miniaturized niches for 3D cell culture provides a new route for cell-based assays. Such production can be enabled by droplet microfluidics and here we present a droplet trapping system based on bulk acoustic waves for handling hydrogel droplets in a continuous flow format. The droplet trapping system consists of a glass capillary equipped with a small piezoelectric transducer. By applying ultrasound (4 MHz), a localized acoustic standing wave field is generated in the capillary, trapping the droplets in a well-defined cluster above the transducer area. The results show that the droplet cluster can be retained at flow rates of up to 76 μl/min, corresponding to an average flow speed of 3.2 mm/s. The system allows for important operations such as continuous perfusion and/or addition of chemical reagents to the encapsulated cells with in situ optical access. This feature is demonstrated by performing on-chip staining of the cell nuclei. The key advantages of this trapping method are that it is label-free and gentle and thus well-suited for biological applications. Moreover, the droplets can easily be released on-demand, which facilitates downstream analysis. It is envisioned that the presented droplet trapping system will be a valuable tool for a wide range of multistep assays as well as long-term monitoring of cells encapsulated in gel-based droplets.

This article investigates one of the important parameters when designing for feel, namely the friction coefficient. An experiment was performed to evaluate how fringe projection could be used to investigate the topography of the fingertip, especially while in contact and sliding on a smooth surface. By allowing this smooth surface to be a small sheet of glass, a topographic camera could take pictures through it. The glass was also connected to a universal force gauge to measure normal and tangential forces from which the coefficient of friction could be calculated. The intention was to get dependable data on the forces, coefficient of friction, apparent contact area and actual contact area. This setup was tested using 66 students who used one and three fingers in both dry and wet conditions and with a rubber glove. In order to measure natural everyday friction, they were not given any particular instructions on how to clean or slide their fingers. This method resulted in a much higher variation in friction coefficients than has been found in previous research. In particular, many higher values were noticed. This illustrates that the friction coefficient is a very hard parameter to rely on when it comes to designing surfaces for feel.

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