This article reviews acoustic microfiuidics: the use of acoustic fields, principally ultrasonics, for application in microfiuidics. Although acoustics is a classical field, its promising, and indeed perplexing, capabilities in powerfully manipulating both fluids and particles within those fluids on the microscale to nanoscale has revived interest in it. The bewildering state of the literature and ample jargon from decades of research is reorganized and presented in the context of models derived from first principles. This hopefully will make the area accessible for researchers with experience in materials science, fluid mechanics, or dynamics. The abundance of interesting phenomena arising from nonlinear interactions in ultrasound that easily appear at these small scales is considered, especially in surface acoustic wave devices that are simple to fabricate with planar lithography techniques common in microfluidics, along with the many applications in microfluidics and nanofluidics that appear through the literature.

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Microscale acoustofluidics: Microfluidics driven via acoustics and ultrasonics

Measurements of SAW (surface acoustic wave) velocities on the entire surface of free and metallized substrates of 128 degrees rotY-LiNbO/sub 3/ are reported. The influence of mechanical loading is examined. All experimental data are given as trigonometric expansions. Improved sets of material constants for LiNbO/sub 3/ and LiTaO/sub 3/ are calculated by fitting them to the experimentally determined SAW velocities. In agreement with R. Graham (1977), a significantly larger value of e/sub 33/ was found for LiNbO/sub 3/. While all material constants of LiBnO/sub 3/ and most of LiTaO/sub 3/ have reasonable error bounds, further improvements are expected from more accurately measured unclamped permittivities. >

Improved material constants for LiNbO/sub 3/ and LiTaO/sub 3/

The ability to manipulate and sort droplets is a fundamental issue in droplet-based microfluidics. Various lab-on-a-chip applications can only be realized if droplets are systematically categorized and sorted. These micron-sized droplets act as ideal reactors which compartmentalize different biological and chemical reagents. Array processing of these droplets hinges on the competence of the sorting and integration into the fluidic system. Recent technological advances only allow droplets to be actively sorted at the rate of kilohertz or less. In this review, we present state-of-the-art technologies which are implemented to efficiently sort droplets. We classify the concepts according to the type of energy implemented into the system. We also discuss various key issues and provide insights into various systems.

Active droplet sorting in microfluidics: a review

This review presents a deep insight into the Surface Generated Acoustic Wave (SGAW) technology for biosensing applications, based on more than 40 years of technological and scientific developments. In the last 20 years, SGAWs have been attracting the attention of the biochemical scientific community, due to the fact that some of these devices - Shear Horizontal Surface Acoustic Wave (SH-SAW), Surface Transverse Wave (STW), Love Wave (LW), Flexural Plate Wave (FPW), Shear Horizontal Acoustic Plate Mode (SH-APM) and Layered Guided Acoustic Plate Mode (LG-APM) - have demonstrated a high sensitivity in the detection of biorelevant molecules in liquid media. In addition, complementary efforts to improve the sensing films have been done during these years. All these developments have been made with the aim of achieving, in a future, a highly sensitive, low cost, small size, multi-channel, portable, reliable and commercially established SGAW biosensor. A setup with these features could significantly contribute to future developments in the health, food and environmental industries. The second purpose of this work is to describe the state-of-the-art of SGAW biosensors for the detection of pathogens, being this topic an issue of extremely importance for the human health. Finally, the review discuses the commercial availability, trends and future challenges of the SGAW biosensors for such applications.

/pdf/surface-generated-acoustic-wave-biosensors-for-the-detection-1so46egl0c.pdf

Surface generated acoustic wave biosensors for the detection of pathogens: a review.

This book gives the fundamental principles and device design techniques for surface acoustic wave filters. It covers the devices in widespread use today: bandpass and pulse compression filters, correlators and non-linear convolvers and resonators. The newest technologies for low bandpass filters are fully covered such as unidirectional transducers, resonators in impedance element filters, resonators in double-mode surface acoustic wave filters and transverse-coupled resonators using waveguides.The book covers the theory of acoustic wave physics, the piezoelectric effect, electrostatics at a surface, effective permittivity, piezoelectric SAW excitation and reception, and the SAW element factor. These are the main requirements for developing quasi-static theory, which gives a basis for the non-reflective transducers in transversal bandpass filters and interdigital pulse compression filters. It is also needed for the reflective transducers used in the newer devices. It is a thorough revision of a classic on surface acoustic wave filters first published in 1985 and still in print. It uniquely combines easy-to-understand principles with practical design techniques for all the devices in widespread use today. It includes complete coverage of all the latest devices which are key to mobile phones, TVs and radar systems; and, a new foreword by Sir Eric Albert Ash.

Surface Acoustic Wave Filters: With Applications to Electronic Communications and Signal Processing

Ahrroct-A method of analysis which uses a combination of analytical and numerical techniques has been developed to obtain an accurate solution to the coupled electromagnetic and acoustic fields set up by an interdigital transducer on the surface of a piezoelectric substrate. Full account is taken of the coupling to bulk modes as well as surface modes, and the solution for the charge on the electrodes includes both electrostatic charge and piezoelectrically regenerated charge. Programs have been written for interdigital arrays with uniform aperture but varying electrode width and pitch and arbitrary electrical connections. The theory is also valid for arbitrary crystal orientations. Generation and detection may be analyzed separately with information being provided on the partition of power into the various acoustic modes and the external load impedance, and the bulk wave radiation patterns are also computed. The program may also be used to find the insertion loss of a pair of transducers. Results are presented for the BleusteinGulyaev orientation of PZT-4 ceramic and the YZ and 41” rotated YX orientations of lithium niobate.

Analysis of Generation and Detection of Surface and Bulk Acoustic Waves by Interdigital Transducers

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/10274/32707/01533306.pdf

M. Redwood

Papers

Analysis of Generation and Detection of Surface and Bulk Acoustic Waves by Interdigital Transducers

Comparison of Exact Theoretical Predictions and Experimental Results for Interdigital Transducers