On-chip cell transportation based on vibration-induced local flow in open chip environment

Abstract

We present a novel cell manipulation method based on vibration-induced flow in open-chip environment. By applying circular vibration to a chip having micropillar patterns on its surface, local whirling flow is induced around the micropillars. Therefore, by patterning micropillar array on a chip and applying the circular vibration to the chip, we can achieve cell transportation along the array in an open chip environment. We theoretically analyzed this phenomenon with a single micropillar, and experimentally evaluated behaviours of manipulated microbeads with two micropillars. We confirm there are different manipulation modes according to the pitch of micropillars. We designed the micropillar array for an oocyte transportation based on these evaluations. We succeeded in the transportation of oocytes with up to 35.6 µm/s and confirmed that the velocity can be changed by changing the frequency and amplitude of the applied vibration.

Multi-axial non-contact in situ micromanipulation by steady streaming around two oscillating cylinders on holonomic miniature robots

“…Significant attention has been devoted to this issue (Lieu 2012;Hattori et al 2015;Leibacher 2015;Amit et al 2016). Combining acoustic streaming and microscale channels is another potential option for selective transportation of microscale objects (Jeong et al 2011;Büyükkoçak et al 2014;Hayakawa et al 2014;Hayakawa 2015). Several interesting studies have addressed the issue of micromanipulation using acoustic streaming (Friend and Yeo 2011;Walter et al 2012;Wiklund et al 2012;Destgeera and Sung 2015).…”