STUDY OF PARTICLE MANIPULATION BY ACOUSTOPHORESIS IN MICROFLUIDICS

Abstract

Acoustophoresis is among the different techniques used in microfluidics to manipulate particles and biological cells. The driving force, acoustic radiation force, is controlled by the resonance energy in practical applications. In this thesis, an experimental study of the distribution of the acoustic energy density in a microfluidic channel is presented. The result shows that in real applications, the acoustic energy density might not be uniform in the functional length of the channel. Based on the knowledge of the distribution of acoustic energy density, the interparticle radiation force between two polystyrene beads was experimentally investigated. It was found that the magnitude of the interparticle radiation force decreases with the increasing separation distance. The thesis also focuses on the application of acoustophoresis in cell mechanics. An axisymmetric cell model is presented to study the deformation of algae cells in acoustophoresis and to estimate Young’s modulus of the algae cell membrane.